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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29261865">The Path to Being Known</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/elowen_p/pseuds/elowen_p'>elowen_p</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>DCU, Young Justice (Comics), Young Justice - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, BAMF Cassie Sandsmark, BAMF Tim Drake, Fluff and Angst, Gen, M/M, bart and cassie are the best siblings, bart rocking up late to the end times with a starbucks, basically core four survive the apocalypse</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 13:07:32</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>21,432</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29261865</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/elowen_p/pseuds/elowen_p</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When Tim and Cassie are still normal kids and Bart and Kon don’t even exist, the Justice League is defeated. The world that’s left has no alternative but to become something dark and twisted enough to defend itself.</p><p>Somewhere within the veritable hellscape that remains: Tim finds Batman; Conner is created to kill Superman; Cassie just tries to survive; Bart opens the doors of his time machine to somewhere a little later than he had been expecting.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Bart Allen &amp; Cassie Sandsmark, Bart Allen &amp; Tim Drake &amp; Kon-El | Conner Kent &amp; Cassie Sandsmark, Tim Drake/Kon-El | Conner Kent</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>173</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>me: *has never consumed any canon media with ANY of these characters*<br/>me, having just seen a load of core four fanart: y'know what I should write?</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Tim Drake is ten years old when the world ends.</p><p>He is alone.</p><p>Of course he’s alone. Why wouldn’t he be alone? His parents are looking at a tomb in Khandaq when everything goes wrong and that’s Black Adam’s turf. So chances are they’ll be dead soon.</p><p>Tim is sad about that, but it’s not the worst thing to happen that day. No, that title undoubtedly goes to all of his heroes dying.</p><p>He watches it on TV, just like everyone else in Gotham does. He watches as they fall one by one, Nightwing and Robin and Batgirl. He watches as Batman shatters a little more as each of his children crumble.</p><p>As he watches his idols fall, Tim shatters with him.</p><p>Batman keeps fighting to the end. He’s on the good side which is a relief because not all of the Justice League is. He’s defending Superman when he goes down, two founders at each other’s backs until the very end. It’s some sort of energy beam that puts Batman on the ground hard enough that he stays there and Tim feels his bones creak from how tight he clenches his fists at the sight. When Superman sees Batman go down he looks around the battlefield for a moment. Tim watches as it sinks in to Clark Kent that he’s lost and that he’s alone.</p><p>Just like Tim.</p><p>Superman picks Batman up and flies away. The reporter doing the voice-over starts shouting that Superman’s abandoned them but Tim would personally prefer an alive hero to a dead one so he doesn’t find the retreat a hard thing to forgive.</p><p>As soon as Superman flies away Tim starts dialling. He calls both his parents but phone lines are already down so he ends up just staring at the phone thinking about what he would say if he really could talk to them. I love you? But then his parents would say I love you back because it’s the socially acceptable answer and Tim’s aware that they don’t <em>actually </em>love him back and he doesn’t want the last thing his parents say to him to be a lie.</p><p>That doesn’t matter though. Because the last thing he said to his parents is going to be whatever he said to them last. Something about schoolwork? Or maybe he had been asking about when they would be home next? He isn’t sure. Tim <em>hates </em>not being sure.</p><p>Once he’s finished being emotional Tim starts to plan.</p><p>Tim is <em>good </em>at planning. He’s good at figuring out Bruce’s patrol routes. He’s good at searching out the best hiding spots in the cracks of Gotham’s sky line. Tim is an intelligent boy and he knows that he should have a plan if he’s going to survive the explosions coming next.</p><p>He looks up at the TV and sees actual explosions being reported in Gotham. Tim decides that he’s probably going to need a plan to survive those as well.</p><p>But Tim has always been good at surviving. So he survives and he does it alone.</p><p>The world ends and Tim keeps looking after himself just like he always has, and if the things he sees are a little more awful, if the world becomes a little darker, then Tim supposes that that’s all just part of growing up.</p><p>Things carry on that way for six months. Then, all at once, Tim stops being alone.</p><p>He’s hiding on a fire escape watching as a gang surround a man trying to cross the city. Tim is no martyr, he’s survived everything so far largely by staying out of everyone’s business as much as possible, but right now he’s planning to intervene. He has the staff that he’s found he’s very good at hitting people with and if one of the guys moves backwards the <em>tiniest </em>bit then Tim reckons that he could drop the fire escape ladder on his head.</p><p>Then, impossibly, Batman steps out of the shadows and starts hitting people.</p><p>Tim almost has to take a moment to process it.</p><p>He wants to scream and shout and tell Bruce off for making everyone think he died. He wants to go up to Bruce and shake him until he realises that being all alone has hurt Tim enough to put an ache deep in his soul that sometimes he fears will never go away. But half the gang just took a step back in surprise and Tim isn’t one to waste opportunities.</p><p>Tim drops the fire escape.</p><p>With the guy below Tim down, along with the one Bruce just took out, the rest of the gang is looking nervous. Tim thinks that part of the reason they look so nervous might be because there’s far too much blood on the guy that Bruce took down for him to still be alive and Tim is definitely going to have to have an existential crisis about Batman abandoning his no kill rule sometime in the near future. The gang still tries to fight, pulling on strange reserves of courage to fight their fear, but Bruce is obviously able to take any of them down in a heartbeat. One guy tries to go for Tim but he just hoists the fire escape up so that he can’t be reached and throws one of his home made definitely-not-batarangs into the man's shoulder.</p><p>Bruce has finished with everyone else by now and is helping up the man who they had cornered. As soon as he’s on his feet he runs, Bruce just lets out a sigh at the sight.</p><p>“You gonna come down?” he calls up to Tim. <em>Uh, yeah? </em>Like Tim’s going to fight with Batman and not talk to him afterwards. He scrambles down the fire escape and Bruce gives him an appraising look. “You were pretty handy up there kiddo. You got somewhere to go after this?”</p><p>“Nope.” Tim didn’t really have somewhere to go <em>before </em>the apocalypse, let alone after. He walks over to one of the guys by the fire escape and pulls his fake batarang from the guy’s shoulder with a loud squelching noise that would have made Tim from six months ago flinch. “Have you got any more of these?” he asks, waving the fake batarang around, “I can never get the weight distribution right.”</p><p>“Sorry kid. I don’t exactly have the same resources as I used to. If you need somewhere to go I know a couple places.” The offer surprises Tim. When Bruce had come out of the shadows and started killing people Tim hadn’t expected that he would still have it in him to be kind.</p><p>“No that’s okay.” And Tim decides to do something rash that may have a little to do with the existential crisis about the no kill rule that he’s currently repressing, “I can look after myself, Mr. Wayne.”</p><p>Bruce turns to look at him at that. The way he looks at him tells Tim that he’s just become a threat in Bruce’s eyes and as much as Tim hates for someone he cares about to look at him like that, it’s also kind of nice for someone to take him seriously enough to see him as dangerous. Tim <em>is </em>dangerous. He’s smarter than almost everyone he’s ever met and the end of the world has only made him better at hurting people when they try to hurt him</p><p>Just his luck that Batman would be the first person the realise. Not that Tim had given him much of a choice.</p><p>“You know.” Bruce grunts, tone losing the kindness it had held before.</p><p>“Yeah.” Then, because Tim doesn’t want Bruce to stop looking at him like he’s someone important, “I figured it out when I was nine.”</p><p>They stare at each other for a moment. Neither quite sure what to say.</p><p>“You’re angrier than you used to be.” Tim blurts out. Then, because he’s not one to back down from the things he says, “You shouldn’t be all by yourself if you’re angry like that.”</p><p>“Most people are angrier than they used to be.”</p><p>“No they’re not.” Tim frowns. It sounds silly but he had never expected Batman to get things wrong. “No they’re not. Most people are dead.” Bruce lets out a choked noise and leans back against the wall behind him, like he needs some support to keep the weight of the world from crushing him.</p><p>Tim is struck by the thought that he is <em>excellent </em>at offering support.</p><p>“So you <em>are </em>all by yourself then?” Tim asks, because there’s a plan forming in his mind but he shouldn’t force his way in if Batman already has someone.</p><p>“Yes. No. I-” He glares at the dead and groaning bodies that surround them. “I see Superman sometimes”</p><p>“He doesn’t count.”</p><p>“Why?” Bruce almost sounds curious.</p><p>“He’s from <em>Metropolis.</em>” Tim says, sounding as scandalised as possible.</p><p>Bruce lets out a bark of laughter and it’s the best thing Tim’s heard in six months.</p><p>“You’re right there, chum.” he sighs, looking up from the bodies. He seems lighter than a few moments ago and Tim is certain that the plan taking shape in his head is a good one.</p><p>“I’m going to go with you.” he declares and Bruce’s good mood immediately turns sour. That’s okay though, Tim had been expecting that.</p><p>“No you’re not.” Bruce snaps.</p><p>“If you don’t say yes I’m just going to follow you.”</p><p>“I’d like to see you try.” Bruce snorts.</p><p>Tim isn’t quite sure how to communicate how inane that statement is. The only reason Tim hasn’t been following Bruce since everything went insane is because he thought the man was dead. Now that it’s clear that is not the case he’s planning to stick close just like when he was younger no matter what the man says.</p><p>Batman needs a Robin.</p><p>“I <em>can</em> follow you. It’s <em>easy</em>.” Tim is aware that he sounds bratty but being difficult is the only way he can think to get Bruce to understand just how true what he’s saying is. “It’s even easier than figuring out that you’re Bruce Wayne or that Clark Kent is Superman. It’s easier than surviving the apocalypse all by myself.” Bruce seems to pause at his words. He looks like he’s actually thinking about it.</p><p>Bruce nods to himself, as if having come to a decision.</p><p>“Good luck kid.” he says, and starts running.</p><p>Tim shoots up the fire escape and starts following. He jumps between rooftops and he’s right about it being easy. He’s faster and stronger than he used to be in greater magnitude than Bruce and the old routine is familiar like nothing else these days.</p><p><em>Batman needs a Robin, </em>he thinks, and he’s sure that with enough time he can persuade Bruce that he’s right.</p><p>It’s not like he’s got much else to do these days.</p><p>~</p><p>Conner’s first memory is of fighting.</p><p>They wanted him to be able to fight because it was his job to kill a bad man. That was the reason Cadmus made him. Someone with lots of power and no one to hold him back was doing bad things and so Cadmus needed to make someone powerful like Conner to stop him.</p><p>Conner has never been very clear about what the bad things this man does <em>are </em>but he’s sure they must be worth killing him over. It would have been kind of silly for Cadmus to make him in the first place if it wasn’t.</p><p>But anyway, his first memory is of fighting.</p><p>The man is better than the robots they usually get Conner to spar with. He’s meant to be an expert, able to teach Conner more about how to hurt people than the robots can. The man isn’t doing a very good job of teaching though and Conner can feel from the warmth of his skin and the twist of his mouth that the man is enjoying this.</p><p>Conner kind of gets that. Fighting can be pretty fun, especially when he’s been in the pod for ages and everything feels stiff and store from being so still and cold and growing. He doesn’t like the way this man enjoys fighting though. He just wants to hurt Conner, not to teach him but because he’ll enjoy it</p><p>Does that mean that this is a bad man?</p><p>Probably. That would make a lot of sense. Maybe the reason Cadmus is making him fight someone made of flesh and blood instead of steel isn’t because the man is a good teacher. Maybe it’s because Conner needs practice hurting bad men if he’s ever going to kill Superman.</p><p>The second the thought processes, fire shoots from Conner’s eyes and through the man’s skull.</p><p>Black, burnt bits of flesh spray across the room from the impact of whatever Conner had shot from his eyes. He looks at the man’s gaping head and sees the grey of brain matter mixing with still bubbling blood.</p><p>Someone with a clipboard comes up to him as his eyes start to water. He didn’t know that killing someone would be like that.</p><p>“Nice one Conner, you’re gonna-” He notices the tears and Conner feels embarrassed and angry and a little like he might puke. “Jesus Christ. Kingston!” he calls to one of the scientists behind him, “take the kid for reprogramming.”</p><p>The memory fades out there. Not quite gone but shifting into something hazier. Dream-like. It’s still painful but in a different way, more intimate.</p><p>Nowadays Conner would laugh about it if he could. Christ, who gets that upset about killing one person? Not him.</p><p>Not any more.</p><p>These days nothing stops Conner. These days he’s strong and fast and angry in all the right ways. The scientists ask him to fight someone, he does it to the death. Simple. Easy. Things are a lot less difficult when you don’t think too hard about them.</p><p>The scientists say that he’s biologically fourteen by the time he’s ready. He knows what being ready means. He knows that he’s finally going to get to kill Superman.</p><p>It’s still the case that no one’s ever quite explained to him why he needs to kill Superman, except that he’s a bad man who needs to be stopped. Conner would still like to know why Cadmus is going to all this trouble over one person, but he doesn’t ache with the same curiosity he used to. When he tries to figure out why all that comes to mind is that hazy feeling and a sensation like needles in his brain.</p><p>None of that matters though. Conner is excited to kill Superman.</p><p>It’s what everything’s been leading up to, right? It’s the whole point of Conner existing. Somewhere in the back of his mind he feels like he should be thinking about what’s going to happen next, what becomes of him once his purpose is fulfilled. It’s a little like that old curiosity about why he needs to kills Superman though, the harder he tries to focus on it the more he feels that dream-like state descending on him as knives scrape at the inside of his skull.</p><p>When they say that Superman is coming, that he’s coming for Conner and Conner needs to kill him just like they’ve always talked about or Superman will kill him, Conner is ready. Conner has been training for this moment his entire life and is ready to take on who he’s certain must be the worst man in the Universe.</p><p>He sits in his room, well, the room where his pod is, and listens to the sounds of Superman crashing through the base. Christ, Conner would understand Cadmus wanting to kill the guy over the property damage alone. The crashing gets closer, nearing Conner’s room. No one says anything outside, all he hears is grunts and thuds and shattering, so Conner’s mind is left to run wild with what Superman might be thinking right now.</p><p>Has he been waiting a long time to kill Conner?</p><p>Conner doubts it. He knows Cadmus wanted to keep him a secret and if he has learned nothing else over his life he has learned that Cadmus is very good at their jobs.</p><p>The sounds of fighting are getting nearer.</p><p>Superman probably just found out about Conner today and came to kill him immediately for no reason. That sounds like the kind of thing a bad man would do.</p><p>The sounds are right outside his door now.</p><p>Conner gets up and steps into a fighting stance. His door is pulled off it’s hinges.</p><p>Conner attacks.</p><p>He lunges at Superman who catches his arm and uses the grip to throw Conner away and, wow, Conner’s never fought anyone stronger than him before. Conner gets right back up, moving into the air this time instead of running at the guy. He crashes into him and the fight is pushed back into the corridor that Superman came in from. Conner is on top now and manages to land a couple hits before Superman manages to grab him and then they’re grappling.</p><p>Superman is stronger but Conner plays dirtier. He also has his TTK which allows him to push and pull at Superman as they fight from all directions instead of just where he can kick or hit.</p><p>“Kid, I’m here to help you!” Superman shouts, and Conner is so confused that he actually loses concentration for a second. The lapse costs him and suddenly Superman has him pinned to the ground with more strength than Conner can hope to overcome. “I’m here to bust you out.”</p><p>Conner’s brain crashes, reboots and even after that he has no idea what’s going on. Cadmus had said that Superman would come to kill him, they never said that mind games were likely or even on the table. The lack of fighting must mean that Superman thinks he’s getting through to Conner since he’s still talking despite how Conner is processing absolutely none of it.</p><p>“You’re here to kill me.” Conner says, more to himself than to Superman.</p><p>They both become silent for a moment. Superman is looking at Conner with something heartbroken in his expression that Conner forces himself to ignore.</p><p>“You’re here to kill me.” Conner repeats with more certainty this time, like saying it makes it true.</p><p>They stare at each other. Conner is struck by how Superman’s eyes are very similar to what he thinks his own might look like from the glimpses he manages to catch on the inside of the pod glass.</p><p>“I’m your fa-” Superman starts, but Conner is ready to head off the mind games this time.</p><p>He fires lasers into blue eyes eerily similar to his own.</p><p>The heat just makes Superman’s eyes glow for a moment, because Superman is the most resilient enemy Conner has ever faced, but within moments the fire manages to burn its way through to the man’s brain.</p><p>Just like it did with all the other people Conner’s killed.</p><p>Conner lies on the floor, still pinned by Superman’s weight as scientists start cheering for his victory along the corridor. Grey brain matter drips into Conner’s eyes from the two identical holes in Superman’s face.</p><p>The holes that used to be eyes.</p><p>Eyes that looked just like his.</p><p>(“I’m your fa-”)</p><p>Something in Conner’s brain lulled into complacency by soft comfort and sharp spikes breaks free, and Conner breaks with it.</p><p><em>I shouldn’t have done that</em>, he thinks, <em>I shouldn’t have done that. </em><em>T</em><em>hat was wrong.</em></p><p>Superman’s brains keep dripping onto Conner’s face. Does he know that they’re the brains of a bad man? Can he really be sure?</p><p>Where did he go after he killed a man for the first time?</p><p>He thinks he’s beginning to remember.</p><p>Conner’s world shatters as the only thing holding him down is a fresh corpse.</p><p>Instead of going back to the scientists, whooping with joy at their successful experiment, instead of going back to his pod and the cold and stiffness that he’s never ever told anyone he hates, instead of staying with Cadmus, Conner runs.</p><p>He tears the emblem from Superman’s chest (<em>a souvenir? </em><em>a</em><em> trophy? </em><em>S</em><em>omething </em><em>else</em>) and flies up. He punches through concrete because no one ever told him the normal way out. He flies up and up and up until the hollers of victory from the people who made him are a little less loud.</p><p>He breaks through a final level and Conner sees the sky for the first time.</p><p>It would be beautiful if not for the mixture of brain matter and tears in his eyes.</p><p>~</p><p>Cassie didn’t realise quite how extraordinary she was before the apocalypse.</p><p>She no longer has that problem.</p><p>She isn’t arrogant with it, or at least she <em>hopes</em> that she isn’t, but she feels secure in her status as a leader these days. She’s the one people turn to when they don’t know what to do. She’s the one who’s always ready to fight and defend and protect.</p><p>Maybe that’s just how some people are. In ordinary life they stand a little straighter, they draw people a little closer, but it’s during a crisis that they truly excel.</p><p>In the apocalypse, Cassie excels.</p><p>She’s been with the same group of kids and teens for the past month or so, making their way along the West Coast. Some of them are hoping to cross the country to get to Fawcett because of the rumours of a hero operating out there, a guy called Marvel strong and naive enough to still be keeping the borders to his city safe. People say that in Fawcett the sun always shines, even as lightning strikes down whatever evil tries to breach its borders.</p><p>“I heard that Fawcett’s the safest place in the world, even better than those bunkers in Canada that Izzy’s group went to look for.” says Malcolm, his eyes made bright by the promise of a better future and the vodka in his hand. Cassie doesn’t think much of staking her future on a fairytale but, well, it’s not like there’s much to stick around here for.</p><p>“Don’t be silly.” snorts the girl next to Cassie. She realises that the two of them are leant into each other and sinks into it a little. The girl’s skin is warm in the same way as the fire the alcohol has put in Cassie’s vein’s and she likes the way it feels. They've suffered through too many cold nights lately. “Anywhere that close to Gotham is probably a minefield.”</p><p>A guy about the same age as Cassie with a handgun next to his beer makes a wild gesture of disagreement. “Nooo, that’s why the government cut Gotham off right at the start. The place is a hellhole but it’s been isolated enough that none of the crazy can infect the rest of the world. I’m pretty sure they shoot anyone who tries to escape the place.”</p><p>The warm girl who Cassie’s now realising she has an arm around leans forward, “Who’s they?”</p><p>“Who the fuck knows at this point?” Cassie says with a snort and a few of the others make grunts of agreement. There’s about fifteen of them, all with scavenged alcohol in hand in a loose circle around an on fire garbage can. It’s not a nice setting but something about it feels teenaged and normal in a way that few things do these days. They chat for a few hours like that. Someone had even spotted a music store during the day and had lugged a guitar to their campsite, someone’s started strumming Come on Eileen and half the group is singing off-key and giddy when the girl melted into Cassie’s side, who she remembers is called Sophia, starts dragging her away.</p><p>Cassie looks at her in confusion, because leaving the group is silly and kind of dangerous even if she’s had too much to drink to really care that much, but the girl puts a finger to her lips and Cassie forgets to care about what’s dangerous and what’s not.</p><p>Sophia drags Cassie behind a wall so that they can still hear the rest of the group but can’t be seen. “We’d be really fucking hot together.” Sophia whispers and Cassie brain blanks. Then she comes back to herself enough to decide that kissing Sophia would be a really good idea right now so she goes for it. Sophia giggles a little against her lips. “I haven’t done this before.” she says.</p><p>Cassie has. “Good thing I’m here then.” she says and Sophia’s giggle turns into a proper laugh. The kisses get harder in the best way after that.</p><p>Cassie is so caught up in the warmth and the tenderness of having someone soft and sharp in her arms that it takes her a full second to notice that the rest of the group has gone silent. Cassie sobers up very quickly after that.</p><p>“They’re quiet.” she whispers.</p><p>“Maybe God decided to be kind and avert the tragedy of me losing my virginity to Come on Eileen.” Sophia whispers back, her mouth still glued to Cassie’s neck.</p><p>“No, Sophia, I’m serious.” The urgency in her voice must cut through some of the fog that had descended on Sophia’s brain since she looks up at that, eyebrows furrowed in a way that Cassie would call cute if not for the definite bad feeling that’s descended on her.</p><p>They move away from each other a little but keep their hands clasped together. Cassie peers around the wall they’d hidden behind to see the rest of the group frozen, looking at something she can’t quite make out.</p><p>“Stay here, I’m going to check it out” she whispers, reluctantly tearing her hand from Sophia’s grip. She’s just about to creep out from behind their wall when Sophia’s eyes go wide and she grabs Cassie’s hands with the most fervency she has all night.</p><p>“It’s the Amazon Queen.” she murmurs, voice saturated with horror.</p><p>Shit. It is.</p><p>Diana Prince walks out of the shadows, Amazons at her back and sword swinging loosely by her side.</p><p>Cassie doesn’t know why Wonder Woman went evil, just that she is. Maybe the Amazon Queen is her evil clone. Maybe this is mind control.</p><p>Maybe you can only lose so many people and stay sane in the aftermath.</p><p>Cassie doesn’t like that last solution though. She’s lost everyone, Sophia’s lost everyone, <em>everyone’s </em>lost everyone. That’s just how things are now, it’s no excuse to go crazy. The whole world would be on fire if that was the case.</p><p><em>The world is on fire, </em>she reminds herself. Still doesn’t give Wonder Woman an excuse to hurt people.</p><p>“You kids shouldn’t be out this late.” she calls, kicking an empty bottle hard enough that it shatters against the wall Cassie and Sophia are hiding behind. Sophia flinches. “It isn’t safe.” She grins. Something feral and unhinged and nothing like the beacon of hope she used to be. “I hear there are wolves about.”</p><p>She kicks another empty bottle, but this time it has a target. It shatters against Malcolm’s knee and Cassie watches her friend drop to the floor. The speed of the bottle probably knocked his knee out, poor kid.</p><p>Everyone with a gun reaches for it, while those that don’t grab baseball bats and shatter bottles. It’s clear that there’s no running away from this fight.</p><p>The guy that had been playing the guitar takes a shot at the Amazon Queen. She brings up her bracer to deflect it and laughs as it rebounds, piercing the boy’s skull right between his eyes.</p><p>“Good shot sister!” one of the Amazons calls. Wonder Woman laughs, bloodthirsty. The battle begins.</p><p>Cassie pushes her thumb between the tendons of Sophia’s wrist to force her to let go. The pained look on her face is more betrayed than Cassie knows how to deal with so she forces herself to ignore it. She runs into the battle, lunging for her shotgun before anyone else can grab it. She senses an Amazon coming up behind her, too close quarters for Cassie to shoot her.</p><p>She grabs the Vodka bottle she’d been drinking from, shatters it against the floor and plunges the broken glass into the Amazon’s eyes faster than even she thought she would be able to.</p><p>The Amazon lets out a cry, swiping blindly with her sword. Cassie digs the bottle in deeper, because these women are attacking her friends, and runs before she can become a stationary target. As she does so she notices that she’s the only person who’s managed to get Amazon blood on their hands.</p><p>There’s a spark of pride at that but it’s by far overshadowed by the obvious fact that there is no winning this fight.</p><p>Cassie spots a pile of rubble and starts climbing as soon as she reaches it. She’s a decent shot and the high ground along with some cover would be nice right now.</p><p>By the time she reaches the vantage point she had been aiming for most of her friends are dead.</p><p>Shit. She thought that she would have more time.</p><p>She should run. It’s a low chance, but there is a possibility that she could get away.</p><p>She doesn’t want to be alone again. She doubts <em>anyone </em>could survive this mess alone.</p><p>Cassie is about to say screw it and retreat when she sees that Sophia has come out of her hiding spot and is face to face with Wonder Woman. In a world where people are brave like that, how could Cassie dare not match their courage?</p><p>Sophia and Wonder Woman are circling each other. It’s clearly a game of cat and mouse, the Amazon Queen is just playing with her food here, but Sophia has more ferocity than Cassie was expecting. She has a baseball bat spiked with nails in her hand like the doomsday survivor she is but it’s her words that seem to be the real weapon. She’s shouting at Wonder Woman, screaming. Cassie can’t quite discern what the words are from her height but she can tell that they’re having some sort of effect on Wonder Woman. Her mouth is downturned and there’s a crease between her brows that Cassie thinks might be entirely new.</p><p>Cassie wonders for a moment if Sophia did debate before everything went to shit.</p><p>The words are distracting Wonder Woman along with a fair few other Amazons and Cassie takes a moment to consider if this is her shot. She should aim for the eyes, it’s the only place that bullets do much good against Amazons.</p><p>Sophia and Wonder Woman keep circling each other. They get a little closer with their every step.</p><p>Cassie checks that the shotgun is loaded. It is.</p><p>Wonder Woman and Sophia are too close.</p><p>They’re still circling each other. They’re coming around again so that the Amazon Queen will be facing Cassie again, so that her eyes will be visible again.</p><p>It’s the only real shot she has.</p><p>Wonder Woman is twirling her sword in a way that makes it clear she's about to throw it. Sophia is going to die tonight. Cassie tells herself that it doesn’t matter who does it, the end result is the same.</p><p>Cassie takes her shot.</p><p>Wonder Woman is too distracted by the intricacies of Sophia’s words and the twirling of her sword to bring her arm up to block it and she lets out a sharp scream as most of the buckshot enters her eyes.</p><p>The rest of it enters the back of Sophia’s head.</p><p>Sophia drops to the floor, clearly dead, as Wonder Woman brings her arm back down. Her eyes will heal, there’s no doubt about that, but they’re bleeding.</p><p>They’re bleeding.</p><p>Cassie made Wonder Woman <em>bleed</em>.</p><p>How many people get to make a god bleed? What’s the death of a friend in the face of that? Cassie is definitely going to die now, but maybe it was just a little bit worth it.</p><p>The Amazon Queen peers through the blood and sees Cassie stood against the night sky with her smoking gun in hand. Then she picks up one of the guns littered across the ground and before Cassie can move or think or do anything about it there’s a bullet heading for the space between her eyes.</p><p>She’s never heard of Wonder Woman pulling a gun on anyone before. She wonders if she should be honoured.</p><p>In the moment between life and death, Cassie appears in a place where she’s surrounded by giants sat in thrones. They peer at her in curiosity and Cassie decides that the afterlife is a very odd place.</p><p>“Where’s my Mom?” she asks the giant that looks like he might be charge. “I’m meant to see my Mom now.”</p><p>“Sorry child, but you’re not quite dead yet.” says a woman with kind eyes filled with fire.</p><p>There are thirteen giants. There are only twelve thrones in the room but all the giants are sat down and Cassie wonder’s if it’s an optical illusion or something more to do with magic than that.</p><p>Probably magic.</p><p>“Your battle was very impressive, child.” the man who looks in charge says, voice booming like thunder, “Your story is one worthy of sagas! It has already made it’s way around Olympus.”</p><p>Olympus?</p><p>Cassie’s mother had told her stories of Olympus. A lot of her work as an archaeologist had been based around the Ancient Greeks and some of Cassie favourite bedtime stories had been of their gods.</p><p>Cassie looks around the room at the twelve thirteen giants and thinks she might be starting to understand what’s happening.</p><p>“How impressive?” Cassie asks, because there’s a chance that she’s on the edge of something extraordinary here.</p><p>A woman with sharp eyes and sharper teeth smiles, “Impressive enough to grant you favour.”</p><p>Cassie barely manages to hold back an eye-roll. “How <em>much </em>favour.”</p><p>“Enough that you can go back.” answers a woman who’s hair glows silver, “And enough to make you powerful. As powerful as an Amazon.”</p><p>Cassie used to dream of becoming a superhero. When she was little it was a fantasy but once the world ended it was something to hold onto until it cut into her heart and made it bleed. It was something she could cling to desperately as she watched people die and die and die and she had to keep going because the tone of her voice and the way she stood meant that <em>she </em>had to be in charge.</p><p>And if Cassie is going to have to be in charge, if she’s going to have to go back and be the one that people turn to with hope in their eyes only to have it crushed again and again and again, shouldn’t she have the powers that match that status?</p><p>“Okay.” she says, and before she can say anything more she can feel the grime and soot of the real world against her skin and the night sky fills her vision.</p><p>Godly magic knits the bullet hole in her head closed and Cassie sits up.</p><p>The Amazons are staring.</p><p>Of course they’re staring. How could they not be staring? Cassie just came back from the dead. Cassie just earned what they had been given in a way that no one had considered possible before.</p><p>Cassie just stood among gods.</p><p>Wonder Woman is staring at her with an entirely foreign expression on her face. Something closer to fear than Cassie would think possible.</p><p>“They can’t choose you.” she whispers in horror, “They can’t still be watching.”</p><p>Cassie starts walking towards her. “Why?” she asks. From the set of Wonder Woman’s jaw she can already tell the answer.</p><p>“Because if they <em>are</em> then why didn’t they let me die with everyone else!” she rages. The Amazons look at their Queen and there’s no masking their fear. Tears start to gather in the corners of Wonder Woman’s eyes but as she draws closer to Sophia’s body, Cassie can say that she feels absolutely no pity. “Why wouldn’t they strike me down?” she asks, quiet, bloody eyes pointed towards the sky.</p><p>“Is that not what they’re doing now?” Cassie asks gently, finally face to face with Wonder Woman. Cassie eases the sword from her grip, almost tender.</p><p>Wonder Woman is still looking at the heavens in askance, her neck bared.</p><p>And with the sword in hand, how could Cassie refuse an invitation like that?</p><p>She swings with all her newfound strength and Diana Prince’s head thuds on the floor. Her eyes are still looking up. Still asking the gods a question that Cassie can’t picture them caring enough to answer.</p><p>The rest of the Amazons are still staring at her.</p><p>“Fuck off. I have bodies to bury.” she tells them.</p><p>They take Wonder Woman’s body but one of the Amazons gives Cassie her arm braces, an inscrutable look on her face. They fit perfectly.</p><p>Cassie ends the night alone, surrounded by the dead bodies of her friends.</p><p><em>It’s a good thing I have super strength with the number of graves I need to dig, </em>Cassie thinks, and laughs, tears streaming down her face.</p><p>~</p><p>Bart steps out of his time machine into a world that still smells of blood and hardship and thinks, <em>shit.</em></p><p>The machine is fried so there’s no way he can go back any further. Bart tries to fix it even though he knows it’s impossible. He rewires and recodes and even hits it as hard as he can but nothing’s going to negate the fact that the machine’s burnt out.</p><p>Bart checks the date.</p><p>And, well, it’s <em>bad</em>, it’s super bad and this was totally not the plan and Bart hadn’t been pessimistic enough to make plans for the machine not working like this.</p><p>But he can’t help but think things could be a lot worse.</p><p>This is, what? Four years after the Justice League fell? Five? Things aren’t irreparable by this point. Earth isn’t hell by this point.</p><p>He starts to think about who he can link up with, because he had always thought that saving the whole world was a pretty big job for just him.</p><p>Tim Drake is definitely doing <em>something</em> in the hero gig even if Bart isn’t quite sure what point in his career he’s at. Kon must have been out of Cadmus for what? Like a year now? And Cassie Sandsmark is probably just about to or just got her powers.</p><p>Wait. Hold the phone. This is like five years after the Justice League fell. They’re all <em>his age</em>.</p><p>Bart takes a moment to freak out about the fact that all the people he grew up hearing folk tales about are kids like him now. He hopes for a second that they all might be friends one day before he gets back to planning.</p><p>Since Cassie’s going to be so new to the hero gig it would probably make sense to look for her first. There’s also the fact that he knows Kon and Tim are going to find each other soon enough and would really rather <em>not </em>be getting in the way of that whole thing.</p><p><em>I can work with this, </em>Bart thinks, and heads for San Francisco.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>This whole thing is pre written so it should all be up within a couple of weeks, I just need to do a bit more editing. The whole fic should be ~20k.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It only takes Tim three weeks of stalking and gentle persuasion to get Bruce to break. He’s kind of disappointed it wasn’t longer. He puts it down to Batman knowing somewhere deep down that he really does need a Robin.</p><p>In those three weeks Tim manages to get some picture of Batman’s current state of mind.</p><p>It’s not great.</p><p>He kills now, which never happened before. What’s even worse is how used to it he seems. Slitting throats as casually as he zip tied wrists in the golden days. Tim wonders at points whether <em>he’s</em> going to have to kill people once Batman gives in and makes him Robin. He hopes not, that’s one hazard of the end times he’s managed to avoid so far, but he supposes he’ll understand if it’s necessary.</p><p>Tim has had a lot of practice with doing things he doesn’t want to because the adults in his life needed him to. He’s pretty sure killing won’t be <em>that </em>different.</p><p>He still thinks that Bruce is taking things a bit far. He needs a Robin, someone young and less weighed down by everything to lift him a little. He needs someone to talk to so that he can spend some time being a human as well as Batman. Tim gets a pretty good handle on the new Bruce as he watches him. He makes a habit of letting Bruce see him once he finishes his battles so he doesn’t have as much energy to spend brooding on how awful everything is.</p><p>After those three weeks of watching and waiting and occasionally being seen, Bruce is unlocking civilians from cages Tim thinks the Joker put them in more for attention than anything else when he grunts, “You going to help, kid?”</p><p>Tim scrambles to start picking locks.</p><p>Fortunately, Tim is excellent at picking locks so if this is a test (it’s definitely a test) he shouldn’t do too badly. There are a lot of people to free and they aren’t exactly in a secure location so Tim decides that Bruce made a good call in choosing this place to give in to Tim’s demands. Even if Tim had kind of hoped he would hold out a little longer. They get everyone out before anyone comes by to start a fight and Bruce disables the joker gas canisters Tim hadn’t even <em>noticed </em>before they have a chance to go off.</p><p>Once everyone who was trapped has run away, newfound freedom putting a dangerous glint in eyes that were previously dull, Bruce says, “I’m going to start training you.”</p><p>“Good. You need that.” Tim says honestly.</p><p>Bruce gives his angry grunt and starts walking off. Tim follows, for once not hidden in the shadows.</p><p>After that Bruce starts training him.</p><p>It’s brutal.</p><p>Through the worst of it Tim wonders if Dick and Jason suffered through the same process he’s going through now or if it had been gentler for them. He thinks it must have been. Bruce had been far gentler back then so it would only follow for his training methods to have matched the person he used to be.</p><p>Through everything that’s gone so awfully wrong Bruce has maintained an impressive measure of his righteousness and his sense of justice and even a lot of his kindness. But he hasn’t had the luxury of retaining any gentleness.</p><p>In fairness, Tim is pretty sure that by the end of this training he won’t either.</p><p>Bruce has him practising kicks for hours before he gets a break. He’ll attack Tim at random points in the day to make him more paranoid than he already is. There’s even resistance to interrogation training at a couple points.</p><p>Tim is not a fan of resistance to interrogation training.</p><p>The experience is gruelling and even though Bruce has maintained an impressive measure of kindness, there are flashes of cruelty that Tim doubts would have ever appeared before he lost everyone he loves.</p><p>Alongside training Tim starts to go out as Robin. It’s only on occasion at first but it becomes clear fairly quickly the he excels in the role and, well, Batman could use a little more backup these days. He gets better with his staff and becomes faster and more agile than he’s ever been in his life. He knows he’ll never be on the same level as Dick or Jason but growing into someone who might be comparable to them is exhilarating.</p><p>As Tim makes more and more outings as Robin he hears the people start to whisper. They say that they’ve seen a boy laughing as he takes down the worst of Gotham. They say the boy answers to something in the shadows. They say the boy wears Robin’s colours.</p><p>Tim’s role as Robin allows Gotham to understand that Batman hasn’t died, that he’s still fighting for them from the shadows. Tim thinks that Gotham needed that.</p><p>Hell, <em>he</em> definitely needed that.</p><p>Gotham’s villains learn to fear Batman again and along with that they learn to fear his new Robin. The new Robin doesn’t kill like Batman does these days, not yet at least, but he’ll leave you beaten enough that you might wish you were dead.</p><p>Tim can’t pretend he doesn’t get a thrill out of the worst people being a little scared of him. It makes him feel like he did that first time he met Bruce, when Bruce looked at him like he was someone important. Like he was someone dangerous. Over his tenure as Robin, Tim finds that he quite likes it when outlaws think of him as someone dangerous.</p><p>It lasts four years. Tim’s tenure as Robin, that is. People think of him as someone dangerous for much longer than that.</p><p>It ends like this.</p><p>Tim and Bruce are shackled to a wall. Tim kind of remembers being hit in the back of the head and is currently dissociating hard enough to think that it’s kind of an anticlimactic end to Batman for someone to just get the drop on him.</p><p>A bone white face appears out of the shadows. It’s not the one Tim had been expecting.</p><p>“Hey, Batsy” says Harley Quinn.</p><p>She’s shaking. Tim doesn’t think he’s ever seen her look anything less than eager to execute whatever plan she or the Joker have next and the unexpectedness of it unsettles Tim in a way few things do these days. There’s a gun in her hand instead of a mallet and it makes Tim wonder if Harley too might live in a colder, less whimsical world now.</p><p>“I’ve gotta hurt him.” Her voice trembles a little. “You get it Batsy, right? I <em>have</em> to hurt him. I’ve gotta make him hurt more than I do. Okay? And you’re the only thing that can do that.” She starts to lift the gun up. It’s shaking too.</p><p>“Don’t do this Harley.” Bruce grunts. “We can talk about this.” Tim doesn’t think he’s ever heard Bruce talk to Harley like she’s someone who can be reasoned with but he supposes that she <em>is</em> acting like someone who can be reasoned with. She seems honestly scared, a complete divergence from her usual aura of immortality.</p><p>“No. This is the only way to hurt him proper.” She sighs. “He really loves you, y’know? I guess it makes sense. He made me so I love him and you made him so he loves you. It’s like a circle.” She laughs, the first hint of her usual persona this whole meeting but completely different at the same time. “Imagine if I’d made you? That’d be a <em>great</em> joke.”</p><p>Bruce looks devastated. “Harleen...” he whispers.</p><p>“I’m gonna have to take the cowl off, Batsy. No point if the bullet doesn’t go through proper.”</p><p>Tim struggles but stays silent. It feels like this is just between Bruce and Harley and maybe, sort of the Joker so it would be weird for him to interrupt. He struggles silently and tries to make sense of what he knows is going to happen next. Harley gets closer to Bruce, the gun down by her side still trembling, and tugs the cowl back from his head. Her eyes go a little wide when she sees his face and it only makes the tear tracks smearing her make-up stand out more. She backs away, cowl in one hand and the gun trembling more and more the longer this goes on in the other.</p><p>“You were my friend.” she whispers, like remembering something from a long forgotten dream. “We were friends, once.”</p><p>“Yes. We were.” Bruce looks sadder than Tim has ever seen in person. Almost as sad as that day the world fell apart and Tim saw him watch his children die through a TV screen. “We complained about anatomy together.”</p><p>“We complained about anatomy together.” Harley repeats in shock. The tears stream down her cheeks all the harder. She laughs again, hollow. “I didn’t need to learn any of that shit to know that you’re gonna die if I shoot you in the head.”</p><p>She lifts the gun, finally, so it’s aimed between Bruce’s eyes. For some reason it’s steady now. “I didn’t make you.” she says.</p><p>“No, you didn’t.”</p><p>“It would have been pretty funny if I had.”</p><p>“Maybe. I don’t have much of a sense of humour these days.” Bruce turns his head so he’s as close to looking at Tim as he can be with the restraints. It makes Tim want to scream. This can’t be happening. “I’m proud of you, Tim.” he says.</p><p>No one’s ever said that to Tim before.</p><p>Bruce looks back at Harley so that the gun’s once again pointed between his eyes. She pulls back the hammer.</p><p>“No.” Tim whispers, breathless.</p><p>She pulls the trigger.</p><p>“NO!” Tim screams.</p><p>He keeps staring at the gun. He keeps staring at the gun because it’s the only thing he can look at without breaking. If he looks at Harley or Bruce or <em>anything </em>except the gentle curl of smoke from the muzzle of the gun he’s going to shatter just like he watched Bruce do the day the world ended.</p><p>Was that really the day the world ended? Or is that today now? Tim doesn’t know.</p><p>Tim doesn’t <em>know</em>.</p><p>Tim hates not knowing.</p><p>The Joker bursts into the room.</p><p>There are tears streaming down his face. They match Harley’s and Tim’s because now he notices he’s crying too.</p><p>“NO!” the Joker shrieks, an echo of Tim’s earlier screams. He falls to his knees, eyes fixed on the space between Bruce’s eyes and Tim’s <em>not looking there.</em></p><p>Harley walks over to the Joker and she’s finally smiling despite the fact there are still tears running down her cheeks. She looks more at peace than Tim’s ever seen her.</p><p>She holds the gun out to the Joker. Tim wonders if she’s asking the man to kill her.</p><p>“You made this.” the Joker breathes. He looks wrecked and hopeless and maybe the tiniest bit in awe of Harley stood over him. “You created this.” he whispers.</p><p>Tim thinks he gets what the Joker means.</p><p>Harley didn’t make Batman or the Joker or even herself. But she’s made this new world where Batman’s dead and everything’s hopeless and that’s just as meaningful. She’s finally a god.</p><p>The Joker takes the gun and rams it into his mouth hard enough that Tim hears some of his teeth break and pulls the trigger.</p><p>And now she’s created a world without the Joker either.</p><p>It’s at that moment that all of Tim’s struggling pays off. The moment the action’s over. One of the shackles fixing his wrist to the wall gives and with one hand free he makes quick work of the rest of his restraints.</p><p>Harley’s still stood there. Staring at the Joker’s corpse. She looks calm and the expression finally causes the anger Tim hadn’t even realised he was pushing down rise up.</p><p>It rises like a tidal wave. A tsunami driving out every other feeling he’s ever felt until all he can see is red.</p><p>Tim strides over and digs the gun out of the Joker’s mouth. The muzzle is sticky with blood and he wonders if that’s going to be a problem.</p><p>“You created this.” he seethes. This world where the only good thing left is dead. Where the first person to look at Tim like he might be someone dangerous is dead.</p><p>“I created this.” she agrees, still staring at the Joker.</p><p>She sounds <em>proud</em>.</p><p>Tim raises the gun to point between Harley’s eyes, the same place she shot Bruce. He doesn’t shake like she did.</p><p>He pulls the trigger.</p><p><em>I could do that again, </em>he thinks as Harley’s body thuds to the ground and his vision becomes marginally less red-tinted, <em>I could do that again easily.</em></p><p>Tim walks away from three dead bodies, ready to make some more.</p><p>~</p><p>As soon as he flies from Cadmus, dripping blood and brain and tears, a certainty descends on Conner that he has to keep moving. That’s how it works right? If you run away from the people who made you you have to keep going so that they don’t catch you. So Conner runs.</p><p>He takes pit stops at random, because he doesn’t have the pod to feed him any more and the Sun is amazing but food is pretty good too. He picks a random direction after every stop, never quite sure where he’s heading but sure he has to get there soon if he wants to stay alive.</p><p>Does he want to stay alive?</p><p>The whole point of him was to kill Superman and now that he’s done that isn’t he kind of useless? Is there any point to him continuing to exist? Conner has a funny feeling that he knows how Cadmus would answer that question.</p><p>But now he’s starting to think that Cadmus might have been wrong about a lot of things.</p><p>He thinks that them only letting him grow in the tube might have been wrong. He thinks that them never letting him see the Sun might have been wrong. More than anything, he thinks that the things they did to poke and tear and rip his brain apart were wrong.</p><p>(I’m your fa-)</p><p>And maybe that means that making him kill Superman was wrong too.</p><p>After two weeks of seeing the Sun and picking directions at random and spending more time growing like normal people do than he ever has before, Conner is forced to make an emergency landing.</p><p>Well, it’s a crash. But whatever.</p><p>It’s more surprising that it hadn’t happened earlier considering the fact that Conner had never flown higher than a tall ceiling while at Cadmus. So while flying fast and erratic and maybe trying a couple of tricks that Conner <em>knows </em>the scientists would hate for him to waste his time on but he loves, he crashes.</p><p>While Conner’s flying it feels like the sky must be infinite. It feels like space is all there is. It’s hardly surprising that he forgets he needs to avoid the ground sometimes.</p><p>He lands (crashes) on a farm somewhere mild and a little more gentle feeling than most of the places Conner has managed to pass through in the whirlwind tour of the US he’s taken over the past few weeks. Once he manages to pull himself up from the dirt he sees that he’s left a deep furrow in the field behind him.</p><p><em>Whoops</em>. Maybe Superman’s penchant for property damage is more understandable than Conner thought.</p><p>Conner lies there for a moment. Taking in the stars above him and the smell of fresh dirt. He should probably get up soon, moving on as fast as possible is his only plan for the future and he thinks he should stick with it until he gets a new one, but he’s tired. He’s tired and there’s no Sun filling him up and he thinks he’d like to lie down for a minute and look at the stars and smell the dirt.</p><p>Then someone fires a warning shot.</p><p>Conner stays lying down, because really what’s a gun going to do to him and his impenetrable skin? But he props himself up on his elbows so that he can see what’s happening. A man is stood with a shotgun in his hand pointed at the sky. He must have been the one to fire the warning shot. Next to him is a woman who also has a shotgun, Conner finds her slightly more concerning than the man since her shotgun is pointed at him instead of the sky.</p><p>Sure, Conner’s not going to put up a fuss about anyone shooting him, but he would really prefer it if they didn’t.</p><p>“You here to cause trouble?” the man calls to him.</p><p>“No.” Conner yells back. Then, as an afterthought, “Sorry about the property damage!”</p><p>The man and woman look at each other. They have a conversation with their faces in the way that only people who have known each other for centuries can and it ends with both of them lowering their guns. They start walking towards him.</p><p>“Are you alright boy?” the woman calls. “That was a pretty rough landing.”</p><p>Woah. That’s weird. No one’s ever asked Conner if he’s alright before. The shock of it causes him to just stare at the couple for a moment, unsure how to construct an answer he’s never had to give before.</p><p>“I’m uh-.” he starts, “I’m good?” The couple look at each other with identical expressions that Conner doesn’t recognise and he’s left feeling distinctly out of the loop.</p><p>“Why don’t you come inside and get cleaned up?” the man asks. “And maybe you could tell us what you were flying away from so fast.”</p><p>“I-” Conner considers denying the fact that he was flying for a moment but takes in the couple’s no nonsense expressions and decides against it. “Yeah. Yeah that sounds good.”</p><p>Conner goes inside.</p><p>The couple, who Conner soon finds out are called John and Martha, quickly become by far the best people Conner has ever met. They talk to Conner like he’s just as human as they are, not like he’s an experiment but like they’re concerned, they insist on putting antiseptic on one of the cuts from his fight with Superman that the crash reopened and they exchange worried looks behind his back when he acts too skittish or afraid.</p><p>“I’m really sorry about the field.” he tries to say.</p><p>“Nothing to worry about.” Martha says waving a hand as if to dispel the notion that Conner ruining their field might be kind of annoying for them. John makes a noise of agreement. “Our son made plenty of similar messes when he was your age.”</p><p>“Plenty of bigger ones too.” John says and Conner laughs along with the couple because he likes them and thinks it's probably the polite thing to do.</p><p>Conner might be imprinting on them. They’re so nice that he can’t even be mad at himself about it.</p><p>The couple spend the whole evening talking to Conner, asking about how he is and where he’s from. In a completely unexpected turn of events Conner actually starts to feel a little guilty about the fact that everything he says to them is a lie, even if he doesn’t have much of an alternative. After a whole, inexplicably kind, evening of this John asks Conner if he’d like to stay the night and maybe help with fixing the field in the morning. Conner says yes. When he does so John and Martha look at each other again with another of those identical expressions that Conner doesn’t recognise however hard he tries. He’s starting to get the message that those looks might not be a bad thing though.</p><p>Conner goes out with John and Martha the next morning to try and help fix the field. It turns out that it’s going to take a lot longer than a morning to sort it out and when that becomes clear John and Martha just tell him to stay a little longer.</p><p>And how could he refuse an offer like that?</p><p>After about a week they tell him to start calling them Ma and Pa. Conner doesn’t know quite what the new names mean, maybe it’s a little like how he had to call all the scientists at Cadmus doctor but the other scientists could just call each other by their surnames? Whatever Ma and Pa are trying to tell him by using new aliases Conner finds that he likes the way the new names sound from his mouth and he likes the way Ma and Pa sometimes go all soft when he uses them.</p><p>On the rare occasions where he’ll ask about it Ma and Pa will tell him that they used to have a son who called them those names. They’ll tell Conner that he would have liked their other son, that he and Conner would have a lot in common. They’ll look at each other at that point, expressions going a secretive in a way that Conner has learned to recognise by now. Conner wonders what it is they have to be secretive about. He wonders what’s so clandestine about their son.</p><p>After those conversations, when Conner is in his room with the door closed behind him, he’ll take that symbol he ripped from Superman’s chest and stare at it for a long time. He doesn’t know why.</p><p>Sometimes new people will come by the farm. People who want to trade things with Ma and Pa for the things they grow. Conner hates it at first, always convinced that any visitor must be a Cadmus scientist in disguise, but as time passes he grows to enjoy the breaks from the monotony of life on the farm.</p><p>Mirah, a woman who Conner supposes might be called a merchant in this new world order, is probably their most regular visitor. Whenever she does come by she makes sure to share stories with them of what’s happening in the wider world. She’ll tell them about how the West Coast is in ruins, patrolled by Amazons who’ll kill any human they see. She tells them that there are rumours that Fawcett City is growing safer every day now that this new hero, Marvel, has popped up.</p><p>Conner likes the stories of Gotham the best.</p><p>“I don’t get why you’re so interested, kid.” Mirah says, “The whole situation there is pretty damn depressing.”</p><p>“C’mon, Mirah. What’s happening with Robin?”</p><p>Conner <em>loves </em>hearing about Robin. He loves the idea that someone his age, someone who doesn’t even have powers like he does, can be formidable enough to keep people safe. If he had been like Robin, Conner thinks that he would have left Cadmus a lot earlier. Probably after they had made him start killing people, but definitely before he killed Superman.</p><p>Ma and Pa say that you should always avoid killing people until you have to and Conner is sure that anything they say is probably right.</p><p>Mirah grimaces, “That’s not a happy story right now.”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Well rumour has it that Batman is dead.” <em>Oh no</em>. “It sounds like Robin is doing a good job keeping things under control, well as much as things can be under control in Gotham, but I don’t imagine the kid’s having a great time of it.”</p><p>“Shit.” Conner agrees. “He could probably do with some help.” he muses.</p><p>“Yeah. I bet he could.”</p><p>Conner doesn’t leave the farm, because of course he doesn’t, it’s all he has now. But he thinks about it. He thinks about what would happen if he went to Gotham just to see if Robin is okay. To see if he might need some help right now.</p><p>Ma and Pa helped <em>him </em>right after he lost everything. It would only make sense for Conner to do the same for someone else.</p><p>Right before he goes to bed that night Conner splays Superman’s emblem against the back of the leather jacket he scavenged a couple of months ago and decides that it would make an excellent superhero costume.</p><p>He forgets about Gotham and Robin and the rest of the world for a little bit after that. All he does is work on the farm and spend time with Ma and Pa and try to grow further and further away from the thing that Cadmus made him.</p><p>All in all, Conner thinks that he spends something like a year on the farm.</p><p>It ends like this.</p><p>He’s eating dinner with Ma and Pa after working all day and everyone’s happy. Everyone’s bright and laughing and good because that’s just how spending time on the farm with Ma and Pa makes you. Conner asks them why they like him calling him Ma and Pa again. He’s asked the question a million times but he never likes it any less when their faces go soft and they start talking about their son before him.</p><p>But this time their faces <em>don’t </em>go soft and nostalgic and happy even if it’s in a bittersweet kind of way like they normally do. This time they look skittish. Like they want to say something new.</p><p>“Well, Conner.” Ma starts, trading one of those looks with Pa, “We’ve been wanting to tell you something about Clark. It might come as a bit of a shock but we think it will help you. With your powers.”</p><p>Conner does not like where this is heading. It sounds like change and he’d be very happy with everything staying how it is forever right now.</p><p>Pa leans forward on the table so that he’s closer to Conner, his expression intent. “We know that you didn’t come from a good place.” Conner has never told the Kents about Cadmus but they know that he’s scared of the people he was with before he found them. “but we wanted to share some things with you so that you know that you have a lot of good in your heritage.”</p><p>“You’re my heritage.” Conner says, because the Kents call him son and he has a very bad feeling about this.</p><p>Ma and Pa look at him like they’re proud and Conner feels the awful buzzing beneath his skin settle the tiniest bit.</p><p>“Well you have a little more heritage than that.” Ma says gently and Conner once again wants to rip his skin off.</p><p>“You see our other son, Clark, he came to us from somewhere else too.” Pa says.</p><p>“He wasn’t human.” Ma says, smiling. Conner wants to throw up and he’s starting to think that he might know why. “He was originally from a planet called Krypton which was destroyed when he was a baby.”</p><p>“It meant that he had powers.” Pa says. “Ones very similar to yours. We think that you might be Kryptonian just like him. Here,” He gets up. Conner’s glad he doesn’t make any gesture for Conner to follow because he’s not sure if he could stand up right now. “a picture might help.”</p><p>Pa comes back after a few moments, a picture in hand.</p><p>It’s Superman.</p><p>He’s flying. He’s flying and he’s smiling wide and he’s surrounded by blue, blue sky and Conner wants to die.</p><p>(I'm your fa-)</p><p>“Honey?” Ma asks, taking his hand in hers. Conner stares at their fingers locked together. “What’s wrong?”</p><p>He rips his hand from Ma’s as gently as possible. “I killed him.” he whispers, voice hoarse. “They told me to kill him so I did. And then I ran away.”</p><p>The air of the room turns dangerous in a way it never has before. It’s a total juxtaposition to the normal safety and happiness of the farm and Conner hates that he’s the reason that all he can hear is the thudding of angry heartbeats.</p><p>He looks up to see what Ma and Pa think of him now. He doesn’t like what he sees.</p><p>They both look heartbroken. Betrayed. Ma has an aura of disbelief about her while Pa seems to have something dangerous beneath his expression.</p><p>Their heartbeats keep thudding in Conner’s ears. He doubts that he’s ever heard angrier heartbeats in his life.</p><p>Conner knows that he deserves it.</p><p>“I-” Ma starts. Her eyes are wide even though Conner feels like she probably isn’t seeing anything. “We’re going to sleep on this." she decides, "And we’ll talk about it in the morning. So no one says anything they’ll regret.” She looks at Pa and he gives a jerky nod in agreement.</p><p>They pull away from him at that point. They exit the room with their arms around each other like they’re sleepwalking. Conner expected it but it still hurts.</p><p>He spends a couple of minutes just staring at the doorway they left through. He waits for everything to turn red, for the world to set itself on fire just because he looked at it and he feels worse than he thinks he’s ever felt before.</p><p>Nothing sets on fire and Conner knows he would feel worse if it did but he feels so empty right now that he kind of wishes that wasn’t the case.</p><p>After he finishes staring at the space Ma and Pa are absent from he gets up and goes to his room. He pulls out Superman’s symbol like he often does. It means something different today.</p><p>“I won’t make them live with the person who murdered their son.” Conner whispers to himself.</p><p>Decision made, he packs up his life and flies away as fast as he can.</p><p>As the Sun rises the next morning and Conner is taking a break from flying to take it in, he listens for the farm because it’s normally about sunrise that Ma and Pa wake up.</p><p>“Does it make me evil if I feel relieved?” Ma says, voice hoarse and breaking. Conner thinks it might be coming from his room.</p><p>“If it does then at least we might be together in hell.” Pa whispers back.</p><p>In that moment Conner feels something in his chest break and he makes the decision that he will never go back to Ma and Pa.</p><p>Sometime in the next couple of weeks of erratic flight paths and the feeling that he’s travelled back in time to when he was first running from Cadmus, Conner remembers that old compulsion he had to check in on Robin. To see how this kid his age who seemed to be all the things Conner wanted to be himself might be doing now that he’s lost the person that matters.</p><p>Without much else to do, Conner starts flying to Gotham.</p><p>~</p><p>Cassie has been back from the dead for about three weeks and how much her new abilities suit her is just settling in.</p><p>She thought she was a good leader before? Now she can back that up with enough raw strength to break down buildings. Now she has power so great she can snap necks like snapping her fingers.</p><p>The power may be going to her head. A little. It’s only natural.</p><p>Cassie hasn’t found a new group to travel with and isn’t feeling particularly motivated to do so. She doesn’t need anyone now. She can stay all by herself and never lose anyone again and she’ll do fine.</p><p>Every night she watches Sophia die. She watches herself take the shot and every time it’s <em>so obvious </em>that if she’d just aimed a little higher or waited a second longer she could have made it work without murdering her friend.</p><p>Maybe that small torture is simply the price of real power.</p><p>Sometimes she wonders if it’s worth it.</p><p>(She knows it is)</p><p>Three weeks into having her powers, Cassie is in a fight when it’s proven to her that doing everything alone might not be the best course of action. It’s a good thing to have proven.</p><p>She isn’t quite sure what the creatures she’s fighting <em>are</em> but that’s true of many things these days. They could be aliens but are more likely something stemming from the arcane. The end times are chaotic in nature so it’s hardly surprising that the Lords of Chaos and their minions have only grown better at making their mark on people.</p><p>There are twenty of them and, sure, it <em>might </em>not have been Cassie’s best decision to take them all on when she’s so heavily outnumbered, but nothing has measured up to her in the time since she’s gained her powers and the idea that she might be outmatched hadn’t occurred to her.</p><p>The power might have gone to her head.</p><p>Cassie is fighting them. Braces on her arms for teeth to close around without touching her skin and the sword she pried from Diana Prince’s hands swinging deep and strong into the writhing mass of flesh surrounding her. Blood spurts into Cassie’s eyes and she flinches. It gives one of the creatures enough of an opening that it manages to clasp its teeth around the tough flesh of Cassie’s arm instead of what’s covered by the brace.</p><p>Cassie doesn’t scream. She doesn’t scream because she’s far too tough to do something as soft as that. But she <em>does</em> let out some sort of strangled yelp which is certainly <em>not </em>a scream although she manages to be somewhat embarrassed by it nevertheless. She’s even more embarrassed when instead of doing something useful she reverts to the panic response of shaking her arm in an effort to force the creature to let go.</p><p>She’s just about to use her sword to pry the creature’s teeth from her arm when a streak of lightning cuts across her vision and takes the creature with it.</p><p>Cassie would usually find time to question this but there are about twelve chaos demons left and she should really deal with those first.</p><p>She keeps fighting, keeps swinging her sword with all the strength in her bones, but the fight goes far more easily than it should from that point onwards. Cassie is still carrying the brunt of the battle but the load is lessened by how the creatures on the outskirts of the fight are being picked off one by one by that same streak of lightning flashing in the corner of her eye.</p><p>Once Cassie is alone and surrounded by dead bodies, a state which is becoming worryingly common for her, she allows herself to question this new development.</p><p>She brings her sword back up into something defensive. “Is there anyone there?” she calls.</p><p>Lightning blurs across her vision once more but instead of disappearing it halts right in front of her, morphing into a boy a little younger than her wearing a red and white uniform. Lightning still crackles over the boy’s skin as he seems to vibrate on the spot.</p><p>“My name’s Bart.” he grins, making a motion as if to say ‘ta-da!’ “It’s like, super cool to meet you. This is totally a dream come true for me.” He looks a little manic but after a moment deflates a little. Cassie imagines that it must be because she’s looking at the boy like he’s crazy, considering the fact that he is. She feels bad about it though so she lowers her sword in an attempt to seem slightly more welcoming.</p><p>“It’s nice to meet you.” she says. It comes out too close to a question for her taste. “It’s nice to meet you.” she repeats with more certainty, going as far as to hold out her hand for Bart to shake.</p><p>Bart’s grin snaps back into place and he grabs her hand with both of his own, jerking it up and down fast enough that Cassie imagines her arm might be wrenched from its socket if she weren’t as durable as she is.</p><p>“It’s nice to meet you too.” he replies, seeming to have calmed down a little even if he’s still on the jittery side. Cassie imagines that to be any less excitable would be against Bart’s nature.</p><p>“I’m-”</p><p>“You’re Cassie Sandsmark. I know.” He’s still grinning like a crazy person and Cassie has gone back to wondering how to knock him out since there’s no way she could outrun him. He seems to catch on to the suddenly awkward air and stops shaking her hand. “Whoops, totally came off as weird there didn’t I. You see it <em>is </em>weird but not in the way you think it’s weird.” He pauses for a moment. Like he’s trying to build up the suspense but doesn’t have the patience to wait for very long. “I’m from the future!” He makes another little ‘ta-da’ gesture.</p><p>Cassie blinks. Bart lowers his hands, uncertain. Cassie blinks again. “You’re from the future.”</p><p>“Yup.”</p><p>“And you know who I am.”</p><p>“Yeah. You’re like, totally famous there. Well, I don’t know if there are enough people <em>left </em>for you to count as famous but basically everyone knows who you are so you probably count.”</p><p>“You’re from the future. Where I’m famous.” Cassie repeats. Bart frowns for the first time in Cassie’s short tenure of knowing him.</p><p>“Are you not getting it? Did I explain it wrong?”</p><p>“Nope I, uh, I get it. It’s just sort of,” Cassie searches for the word. “Unexpected. It’s unexpected.”</p><p>“Ah yeah I totally get that. Not much time travel around here, eh?”</p><p>“Nope.” Cassie shakes her head. “Definitely not.”</p><p>Cassie’s next big decision is whether r not she believes this kid and she’s leaning towards yes. He obviously has powers which lends some level of credibility to any stories of insane things happening. There’s also the fact that those powers make him a speedster. She wasn’t entirely up to date on everything happening with superheroes in the old days but she’s pretty sure that the Flash was always getting into messes with time travel.</p><p>So yeah. Cassie’s going to believe this kid. Until something happens to disprove him.</p><p>“This might be a kind of personal question,” Cassie has no idea if she’s actually asking a personal question but best to be on the safe side. “But why would you come back to,” She gestures to the ruins and piles of chaos demon corpses surrounding them, “<em>this?</em>”</p><p>Bart scratches the back of his neck, looking suddenly sheepish, “It was kind of an accident? I meant to go back to before everything went wrong but my time machine kind of,” he waves his arms around in what Cassie thinks might be a ploy to delay saying something he doesn’t want to, “broke. It broke. And I’m a little late but it’s all good.” He lets out a relieved kind of laugh, “Trust me, things get a <em>lot </em>worse. Since I’m back before all that happens we can hopefully stop it before we’re <em>all </em>moded.”</p><p>“It gets <em>worse</em>?” Cassie squawks incredulously.</p><p>“Ooooh yeah it gets worse. It gets <em>way </em>worse but we’re gonna stop things from getting that bad.”</p><p>Cassie blinks. She thinks that Bart might not relate to the concept that people tend to take time to process things so she tries to speed along her acceptance of the situation. “Is the we you and me?”</p><p>“For now, kind of? We should find Kon and Tim Drake in like,” he thinks for a moment, seeming to do calculations in his head, “a year? Something like that. They should know each other and have Gotham kind of under control by then. I’m pretty sure that you three are the only big heroes around right now.”</p><p>“Who are Kon and Tim Drake?”</p><p>“Tim’s Robin, or he used to be Robin, I’m not quite sure what point he’s at right now. He’s basically Batman but smarter and he isn’t weird about metas. He’s super crash, in the future he’s in charge of everyone. Kon is kind of like Superman but don’t tell him that. There are these rumours that he killed Superman and I don’t want to, like, drag that up for him.” Bart says all of this very casually and Cassie wants to shake him.</p><p>“You want us to work with the guy that killed Superman?”</p><p>Bart looks at her skeptically. “Didn’t you kill Wonder Woman?”</p><p>“She deserved it.” Cassie scoffs. “Superman was still a hero.”</p><p>“Well it’s not like Kon killed him on <em>purpose</em>.” Bart says, like he’s stating the obvious. “He got made in a lab and they made him do it or something. I don’t know the whole story. Kon is definitely a good guy though and he can fly and shoot lasers out of his eyes and punch people through walls. So we want him on our side.”</p><p>Cassie wants to argue but she can’t deny that Bart makes a good point.</p><p>“I heard that there’s this store nearby that still has in date twinkys.” She says, instead of something useful. “You wanna go look for them?”</p><p>Bart brightens, smile impossibly wide, and Cassie decides that maybe going it alone isn’t for her.</p><p>~</p><p>Bart <em>loves </em>Cassie.</p><p>A couple of months into knowing each other Bart has decided that she’s probably the best person in the world. She can punch harder than anyone Bart’s ever met before and she always knows where they should go next and she listens to every one of the tangents and rants that come out of Bart’s mouth even when they’re meant to stay in his head.</p><p>Bart has made the executive decision that Cassie is going to be his best friend for life. The best thing about this choice is that Cassie has made it clear that she feels exactly the same despite what he might deign to call a slightly rocky start.</p><p>It’s not like Bart came back in time to make friends but he is pretty sure it’s the most important thing that’s happened so far.</p><p>“In the future,” Cassie starts carefully one day, because she’s always careful when she talks about the future, “Do people <em>just</em> think I was good?”</p><p>“I don’t get it.” Bart frowns. “They think you were great! Do you want them to think something else? Cause we can definitely make that happen.”</p><p>“No I mean-” She huffs. “You said that people in the future think that I was good yeah? But don’t they think that I was bad as well?”</p><p>“No way!” Bart exclaims. “Why would they think that? Everyone thinks that you were crash!” Cassie looks down, nervous. She isn’t normally nervous and Bart hasn’t learned how to be a good friend in this context yet. “Are you okay?” he asks, because he thinks that might be what a good friend is supposed to ask.</p><p>Cassie doesn’t meet his eyes. “I just thought-.” she takes a breath. “I thought that since I, y’know, people might think I was evil because of what happened with the Amazons.” she says far too quickly.</p><p>It’s a lucky that Bart is good at keeping up.</p><p>“Everyone knows that Wonder Woman went evil. People in the future are happy that you stopped her.”</p><p>“No one thinks I go evil?”</p><p>“No one thinks you go evil.”</p><p>“I don’t go evil?”</p><p>“You don’t go- What?” Bart looks at Cassie and tries to communicate as much disbelief as possible with his face. “Of course you don’t go evil! That would be crazy.”</p><p>Cassie finally meets his eyes, looking slightly less uncertain. “That’s kinda the point, Bart.” she says wryly. Bart just looks at her, his incredulity rendering him silent for possibly the first time since they’ve met. Cassie makes some sort of frustrated gesture and lies back from where she’s sat down. “I don’t know! Bart I’m-” She props herself up on her elbows so that she’s looking at Bart instead of the sky. “I’m <em>so powerful</em> Bart. And it’s weird, right? I think back to how I used to be and I can’t believe how weak I was. Like if I met old me I could snap her neck easy. Or punch her through a wall. Or something. And then I think ‘oh yeah, old me is <em>everyone else.</em>’ and then I think how easy it would be to snap someone’s neck and,” she rubs a hand over her face “I shouldn’t think like that, right?”</p><p>Bart frowns and lies down so that he and Cassie are both looking at the stars. He thinks for a moment. “I can run fast enough to rip a hole in spacetime. If I did it maybe I would get back to a time before the apocalypse or maybe I would go back to the future I came from, but what would probably happen is that the whole world would just go,” he makes a ‘ka-boom’ sort of noise and mimes an explosion, wiggling his fingers so that lightning arcs between them. He props himself up just like Cassie did so that they’re looking at each other. “I think about doing that all the time.” he says as seriously as he’s said anything in his life.</p><p>Cassie goes silent. “You’re good Bart.” Bart tries to break eye contact but Cassie shuffles over and takes his face between her hands so that he has to look at her. “You’re the most good person I’ve ever met.” she says before pulling him in to hug.</p><p>“We’re going to save the world.” Bart says into her shoulder, trying to ignore the pricking of tears behind his eyes.</p><p>“Yeah,” Cassie whispers back, voice cracking. “We’re going to save the world.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Cassie and Bart are best siblings.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is it folks!! The finale you've been waiting for!!!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Tim has been Gotham’s sole protector for around a year.</p>
<p>He’s very good at it.</p>
<p>He doesn’t <em>like</em> it. But he doesn’t like it in the context that he would hate to do anything else. Even if he doesn’t enjoy being the new Batman there’s still no part of him that wishes he was something else. People have actually started calling him that, ‘The New Batman’. He loves and despises it in equal measure. For people to place him on the same level as Bruce is perhaps the greatest compliment Tim’s ever received, but that’s part of the problem. It doesn’t fit right. <em>Batman </em>doesn’t fit right.</p>
<p>Tim tells himself that he’ll find a new name one day. Larger than Robin but not quite weighed down in tragedy as Batman. Tim’s been telling himself that he’ll do that for around a year.</p>
<p>In fairness, he has had bigger things to worry about.</p>
<p>As soon as Tim graduated from his station as Robin the rumours did a lot to solidify his position. The rumours that he walked out of a room and left behind the dead bodies of the Joker, Harley Quinn and Batman. People still whisper about what he must have done to make it out of such a room. Tim doesn’t like to take credit where it isn’t due but he refrains from correcting people that painful histories and raw emotions did most of the work that day.</p>
<p>Tim doesn’t like taking credit where it isn’t due, but he understands where it’s necessary.</p>
<p>There’s also the fact that he would rather die than be forced into a discussion about the agony he endured that day. So there’s that.</p>
<p>Tim has been alone again for a little under a year when he meets Conner.</p>
<p>It starts like this.</p>
<p>Tim is on a rooftop, his territory. It’s gotten to the point where people don’t hang around on rooftops unless they want to risk running into him. People tend to do their best to avoid him these days, any other course of action is far too dangerous for anyone who’s survived this long to contemplate.</p>
<p>Tim is on a rooftop and he hears someone behind him.</p>
<p>This is exceptional in and of itself, not just because approaching him is typically an awful decision for anyone with a sense of self preservation, but because Tim <em>didn’t hear </em>this person approaching him. He was alone on the rooftop and now he isn’t, a transition that happened in an instant.</p>
<p>“You going to try and kill me?” Tim asks.</p>
<p>Whoever’s behind him shifts a little, “Nah.” The voice is male and confident in the easy way that people who know just how hard they can hit are. “Just thought you looked kinda lonely.” Tim manages to turn fast enough to see a boy with dark hair and a darker leather jacket shrug his shoulders.</p>
<p>“This is your warning to fuck off before I make you.” he spits. The other boy doesn’t look particularly afraid, just curious. Tim isn’t used to people not being afraid of him but for some reason he doesn’t hate this boy for not fearing him. It just makes him curious too. The boy doesn’t move and Tim doesn’t want to hurt him for it, a surprise in and of itself, so he asks, “How did you sneak up on me?”</p>
<p>The boy scratches the back of his neck, nervous in a normal teenaged way rather than a life or death one. “Uh, I plead the fifth?” Tim keeps glaring at him and the boy lets out a sigh that Tim supposes is his signal for giving in. “When I got here I may have ignored the ‘no metas in Gotham’ signs.”</p>
<p>Tim snorts. “Fuck that.” The boy looks at him in surprise before breaking into a nervous kind of smile. Tim decides that he hasn’t got a problem with the boy and it definitely has nothing to do with his impossibly nice smile. “Have you met Poison Ivy? Have you met <em>Bane</em>? No metas didn’t even work back when Batman could actually control who came and went from the city.” Tim pauses. “Also I wouldn’t want to kick out one of the very few people I’ve talked to here who hasn’t tried to kill me within the first three words.”</p>
<p>The boy pulls a fake thinking face. “Well if you’re not going to kick me out of your city then I guess I can let you in on my secret.” Tim has just enough time to find that he likes Gotham being called ‘his city’ by this stranger before he’s jolted into mild panic. The boy has started to float into the air and that’s normally something that Tim could at least sort of deal with but Tim has started to float in the air too and he is <em>not </em>a fan. He starts to flail a bit and the boy zooms over and grabs him under his armpits which is kind of embarrassing but Tim is relieved for some sort of support that doesn’t feel like it’s coming from everywhere.</p>
<p>“Sorry, I should have asked if you wanted to come up too.” The boy smiles again awkwardly and now that they’re back on the ground Tim is charmed enough to forget being freaked out. “Start again? I’m Conner.”</p>
<p>He holds out his hand to shake and Tim takes it despite feeling that hanging onto each other in mid-air puts them past the handshake stage. “Tim.” he says, his smile feeling stiff from disuse. Conner’s eyes widen and Tim lets out a little chuckle. “Not much use in secret identities these days.” he says, answering the question before it can be asked.</p>
<p>“Huh. Guess not. Nice to meet you, Tim.”</p>
<p>“Nice to meet you too, Conner.” They let go of each other’s hands a little later than necessary and Tim crosses his arms and leans back a bit. “So what’s a boy like you doing in a city like this?”</p>
<p>Conner laughs and Tim thinks he might feel more like a normal teenager than he ever has before. “Looking for you?” Tim raises an eyebrow before realising that it can’t really be seen behind the mask. Conner seems to see the gesture anyway and looks embarrassed. “Sorry, that sounded weird. I mean- Well I can’t really say it that differently. I kind of heard that you were by yourself now and something happened so I had to run and I wasn’t heading towards anything and then I thought that no one’s probably checked to see if you’re okay on your own now so I thought I may as well head towards Gotham and-” He pauses and looks mildly horrified. “Oh my God I’m only just realising how weird this is now, sorry I should just go-”</p>
<p>“No. Stay.” Tim cuts in, surprising himself. “I-” he doesn’t have a plan for what to say next. Tim is not used to not having a plan these days. “No one’s checked to see if I’m okay. It’s nice that you’d do that.”</p>
<p>“Okay.” Conner says smiling.</p>
<p>Tim smiles back. They keep talking till sunrise.</p>
<p>~</p>
<p>“Everyone stay behind me, and when the boy made of lightning picks you up don’t struggle!” Cassie half shouts to the group of kids behind her.</p>
<p>“Do what she says!” fully shouts their leader, a girl that Cassie is sure looks familiar but can’t quite place.</p>
<p>A monster as tall as a skyscraper roars and Cassie decides that she has more pressing things to worry about than half-remembered faces.</p>
<p>The plan right now is defence. Cassie’s job is to make sure that none of the kids behind her die and Bart’s job is to get all of the kids out of range of the hell monster before any of them die. They’ve been using the whole shtick of Cassie keeping whatever evil they’re fighting that day away while Bart evacuates the civilians for months now and the plan has practically become a routine.</p>
<p>Cassie swings her sword and briefly considers how the size of this monster makes this operation a little less routine.</p>
<p>The monster is snake-like in nature but with three heads, all of them hissing in an eerie harmony that echoes across the battlefield somehow louder than Cassie’s shouted instructions. It tries to swing its tail towards their group but Cassie runs and manages to swing her sword hard enough to cut off the tip before it manages to get any momentum up. The pain makes the tail spasm for a moment and Bart has evacuated three more kids before the creature gets a hold of itself again.</p>
<p>One of the heads lunges for Cassie but she dances out of the way of its first attempt. She moves a little further from the group, hoping that the fact that she won’t be near enough to defend them particularly well is outweighed by the fact she won’t be near enough to make them a target. It works well enough as another of the heads launches itself at her and it doesn’t even reach the vicinity of the group Cassie’s trying to protect. Things carry on like that until Bart gets all the kids out. Cassie dances away from the creature, distracting it from the group, while Bart dashes between here and whatever safe place he’s chosen this time.</p>
<p>The creature makes its final lunge and now that all the kids have been evacuated Cassie decides to stop playing games and stabs her sword directly into one of the eyes of the head that tried to go for her this time. She rips the sword back out as quickly as she plunged it in and it gives with a disgustingly wet sounding squelch. She manages to return to her practice of dancing out of the way as the creature thrashes in pain but only has to continue the performance for a moment before Bart has her in his arms and is running her to wherever he’s stashed the rest of the group.</p>
<p>They come to a stop in a convenience store that they’ve used as a hideout before and Bart puts Cassie back on her feet with a thud. The moment she’s down her and Bart launch into the handshake they made up a month ago for whenever they do something particularly cool and Cassie pretends not to feel the stares of the group as they move through the series of highfives and fistbumps.</p>
<p>“So crash.” Bart grins once they’re done.</p>
<p>“Don’t you forget it.” Cassie answers with a wink, just like she always does. Someone lets out a pointed cough behind them and Cassie and Bart are back to business.</p>
<p>“Thanks for doing that, it was very cool,” says the girl who Cassie thinks looks familiar. She’s tall with wild hair and heavy combat boots that make her steps sound official and authoritative. “but who are you guys? Cause I’m guessing you’re not actually Cassie.”</p>
<p>Bart steps towards the girl, “Woah,” he says, wide eyed, “How’d she know your name?”</p>
<p>The girls eyes go even wider than Bart’s and Cassie realises who she’s talking to, “Oh my God, Izzy?” she asks, “Going to Canada Izzy?” The girl barely has time to nod before Cassie is pulling her into a hug, remembering at the last moment to keep it loose enough not to break any bones.</p>
<p>She’s willing to admit that Bart’s tactile nature may have had an effect on her.</p>
<p>“Cassie?” Izzy asks as soon as Cassie releases her, “What the fuck happened to you?”</p>
<p>“Hey!” she snaps jokingly, “None of that language with children present.”</p>
<p>Bart rolls his eyes, “I am biologically, like, one year younger than you. I also lived in a worse apocalypse than this one so I have way more right to swear than anyone here.”</p>
<p>“You are two years old, young man and I don’t want to hear any more of that attitude.” Cassie replies, pointing a finger at Bart which might have been threatening if not for the grins on both of their faces.</p>
<p>Izzy looks between the two of them in confusion and maybe a little bit of awe, “What happened to you?” she repeats.</p>
<p>“She rose from the dead, got superpowers and chopped Wonder Woman’s head off.” Bart cuts in before Cassie has a chance to say anything.</p>
<p>“I didn’t even die, Bart.” Cassie rolls her eyes. “I was like, a millisecond from death. The gods probably couldn’t have even brought me back if I’d actually arrived in the underworld by the time they scooped me up rather than just being on my way.”</p>
<p>The kids they rescued are looking between the two of them weirdly and Cassie thinks her perception of normal may have irreparably shifted since she met Bart.</p>
<p>“That’s the bit he was wrong about!” Izzy squawks and Cassie decides that, yes, she must have a skewed view of normal if everyone’s freaking out about something as simple as that. “What happened? You were normal when I left and now you have superpowers?”</p>
<p>“Well the gods decided that I was pretty cool so they decided to give them to me and stop me from dying.”</p>
<p>“Did he get his powers from the gods too?” Izzy asks, gesturing wildly at Bart.</p>
<p>“No way,” Bart says, making lightning dance across his skin because he’s dramatic like that, “My powers are all natural baby.” he grins.</p>
<p>Cassie rolls her eyes, “He’s the Flash’s grandson from the future so he inherited superspeed from his grandad.”</p>
<p>Izzy puts her head in her hands. “You’re saying that like it should cure my confusion but it really, <em>really </em>doesn’t.”</p>
<p>Cassie and Bart look at each other, making identical shrugs of ‘I don’t know what to do’. Izzy makes some tormented sound of frustration which is muffled by her hands.</p>
<p>The two of them look at the group in confusion, wondering if there’s a way to explain either of them without raising a thousand more questions.</p>
<p>Cassie takes a moment to think that it’s a good thing that her and Bart have each other. At least <em>someone’s </em>always going to understand.</p>
<p>~</p>
<p>Five months after meeting Tim for the first time, Conner is still in Gotham.</p>
<p>He didn’t <em>mean </em>to stay, it just sort of happened. If asked he will deny that Tim is most of the reason he’s still here despite the fact that it would most definitely be a lie. It might be partly because Tim is the first person Conner has ever met who’s close to his age, Tim is the first person who’s ever treated Conner like they’re equals. It means more to him than he would like to admit.</p>
<p>So Conner stays.</p>
<p>At first he just hangs around Tim when he’s not officially working and lets him rant at him about whatever case he’s working on, or whatever corner of Gotham he’s trying to save from turning into hell that week. After about a month of that, Tim asks if Conner would like to help, making it very clear that Conner can back out whenever he wants. Conner, who has been hearing stories about Tim defending his city since he arrived on the farm and over the past month has watched with from the side-lines with awe as Tim has single-handedly kept Gotham from destroying itself, answers with an emphatic yes.</p>
<p>So he starts helping Tim. He isn’t much for the detective work but when it comes down to a fight he makes himself invaluable. He’d been a little worried that it would remind him too much of Cadmus and it kind of does but in a weirdly good way. Conner really <em>had </em>enjoyed learning to fight at Cadmus. It had been twisted, just like everything at Cadmus had been twisted, until the fighting stopped being a choice, until killing people stopped being a choice. But here, where he’s joining Tim’s crusade to stop this city that he’s claimed from falling into total anarchy? Conner enjoys fighting again.</p>
<p>So Conner stays. And he’s happy. He realises that with the Kents he had always been waiting for the other shoe to drop but here that awful mixture of anticipation and dread has vanished. Conner feels like he’s carved out his place here next to Tim, it feels like he’s made something entirely his own.</p>
<p>It doesn’t hurt that Gotham has been cut off from the rest of the world for over five years now and Conner finally thinks he might have escaped the shadow of Cadmus.</p>
<p>“You’re thinking too hard.” Tim says, smiling small and honest as he flicks the centre of Conner’s forehead.</p>
<p>“I’m allowed to think.” he says, smiling back unconsciously.</p>
<p>Tim rolls his eyes. “Well, <em>yeah, </em>but you looked sad.” he puts a hand on Conner’s shoulder and he can hear Tim’s heartbeat flutter a little. “Did you want to talk about it?” He’s looking up at Conner, the two of them far closer than people tend to be, and the familiarity of the position makes Conner feel happy and safe in ways that he would've thought impossible before meeting Tim.</p>
<p>“I was thinking about where I used to be. Before you and before the farm.”</p>
<p>“Oh.” Tim says, small and surprised. Conner <em>never </em>talks about where he was before Ma and Pa found him, he barely talks about Ma and Pa. The thing is that he’s been thinking about spilling it all to Tim for a while now. He thinks that the only reason he hasn’t done it already is because he’s never done it before. He thinks that Ma and Pa understood the broad strokes of it but the broad strokes of it were pretty much just ‘it was bad’. Conner’s never explained the shape that the evil took. He’s never explained how the depravity worked it’s way into his head whenever the scientists lured him into that dream-like state and made him forget what it was to have a soul.</p>
<p>“I’m gonna talk about it now.” Conner says, because now is as good a time as any and this story should probably come with a warning.</p>
<p>Tim looks at him with wide eyes, like he can’t believe that Conner would trust him with this. Conner thinks that if that’s what Tim’s thinking then it’s a pretty silly thought since both of them have shown that they’d die for each other a thousand times over the past five months, so he takes Tim’s hand in his own and hopes that communicates his thoughts without him having to voice them. Tim squeezes his hand which Conner assumes means that it worked.</p>
<p>He decides to start with what he knows he can say. What he’s said before.</p>
<p>“I was made in a lab to kill Superman." He forces out, voice cracking. "And I did it. I killed him.” It’s a little easier to say than the first time and Conner puts that down largely to the fact that Tim never had a personal connection to the man.</p>
<p>He had been a little worried about Tim ripping away from him but he just holds his hand tighter. “It’s okay. You can tell me.” Tim whispers.</p>
<p>Conner believes him. “There was a uh- There was a pod that they grew me in? They’d take me out to train me. To teach me to fight, I mean. I was meant to kill whoever they put me in front of, it was meant to be good training for Superman.” Conner can feel the pricking of tears behind his eyes and he <em>knows </em>that if he looks at Tim who he can feel starting to shake beside him he’s going to start crying so he keeps his eyes fixed on their clasped hands. “I cried the first time they got me to do it. They didn’t even tell me to, it was the first time my laser vision happened and I just.” he swallows, “I just burned through the guy. On accident. And they were so happy about it, yeah? But it made me cry. So they sent me to this other part of the facility and I don’t really remember it.” he lets out a hollow laugh that makes Tim flinch and he wants to stuff the sound back into his body. “That was the whole point I guess. They made me forget. I forgot that killing people made me feel bad. And after a while they just made it so that I forgot to feel bad when I killed people.” He huffs out a breath and Tim’s shaking even harder and Conner wants to look up to check on him but he can’t bring himself to do it. “Fuck, I was like, four Tim. Who does that to a fucking four-year-old?”</p>
<p>Then Conner makes the mistake of looking up at Tim’s face.</p>
<p>Conner’s never seen him look more pissed and none of it is directed at him. It settles something in Conner, for someone to be that angry on his behalf. It makes the fears he had of being rejected once Tim knew what a screwed up history he has disappear into nothing</p>
<p>Tim lifts a shaking hand up to brush Conner’s cheek and it’s only then that he realises that he actually has started crying. He tries to brush the tears away but Tim catches his hands with his own. “Please don’t worry about it.” he whispers.</p>
<p>“Okay.” Conner whispers back, because their faces are a lot closer together now and speaking at regular volume seems unnecessary. “I didn’t realise until I left that they had been making me forget things, that they’d been messing with my head. It was the same day I killed Superman.”</p>
<p>“Conner-” Tim whispers.</p>
<p>“And this is the- Well I don’t know if this is the worst part but it’s pretty bad. I used to look forward to killing people.” his voice breaks and Tim shifts in response but Conner <em>needs </em>to say this. “I hated the pod <em>so much</em>. It was so cold and it made everything ache so deep and <em>people aren’t meant to grow that way</em>. So I looked forward to killing people because it meant that I could move and be warm and be a person for a bit and it all just got so fucked up in my head? I just started to think of killing people by its self as being a good thing and I-” His voice breaks, “it was so fucked up, Tim.” Conner swallows and feels the tears still streaming down his face. “That’s most of it.” he says, voice cracking.</p>
<p>Tim pulls Conner into his shoulder and they stay like that for a while, holding each other tight as a wet patch steadily grows on Tim’s shoulder. Once Conner starts to sag, tired after carrying the weight of his past for so long, Tim pulls away enough for the two of them to face each other. Their legs stay pressed together and Tim has his hands on either side of Conner’s face, positioning it so that their foreheads are pressed together.</p>
<p>“I’ll kill all of them for you, if you want.” he says with such utter conviction that Conner can’t help but revere him for a moment. “I’ll leave Gotham and find every person who did that to you and I’ll kill them if that will make it feel even the tiniest bit better.”</p>
<p>Conner is struck not for the first time by how much he loves Tim. It’s like an ache in his chest filling him up and emptying him out all at the same time.</p>
<p>“I’d prefer for you to stay here. With me.” he says honestly.</p>
<p>Tim pulls him back into the hug, their heads resting on each other’s shoulders again. “Okay.” he says, voice a little muffled, “I can do that.”</p>
<p>They stay there for a while longer. Waiting for each other to calm down and waiting far longer than either of them thought they would have to. Conner is more rattled by having to relive his past than he thought he would be and Tim is far angrier than Conner had expected.</p>
<p>“We can find out things about Krypton if you want?” Tim says into his shoulder and Conner likes listening to Tim’s voice coming from somewhere so close. “Batman had information about everything. Maybe it would stop you from feeling like you just came from the lab.”</p>
<p>“It was called Cadmus.” Conner corrects absently. “Yeah.” he says, more present. “Yeah I think I might like that.”</p>
<p>It’s the same offer that Ma and Pa made him when they told him about Clark but it feels completely different to that. Their offer had been tainted by Conner’s past, by things that he knew they could never forgive him for no matter how much they might have tried if he’d given them the chance. This feels nothing like that. Tim has done awful things to keep Gotham from becoming a true hellscape and it’s caused a loss of innocence that has nothing to do with age. It makes Conner feel secure that Tim couldn’t reject him because of the awful things he did at Cadmus when Tim has done so many almost as awful things in his own home.</p>
<p>“You want to go now?” Tim asks.</p>
<p>“Yeah.” Conner’s exhausted from the emotions his past brings up but he doesn’t want this to be where the conversation about him ends.</p>
<p>Conner picks Tim up with a combination of his telekinesis and his arms as has become routine for them and Tim starts giving directions for wherever Batman must have stored his secret information stash. They fly out of the city centre and the ground becomes greener and the houses larger. They keep going until the houses morph into what Conner would call mansions and Tim says they’ve arrived.</p>
<p>Conner sets them down in front of a huge manor, gothic and pretty in the same way a surprising amount of Gotham’s architecture is. Conner looks over and sees that Tim isn’t looking at the mansion in front of them, he’s looking at the next one over, just barely visible through the darkness and the mist.</p>
<p>Conner nudges him, “You okay?”</p>
<p>Tim gives him a strained smile in return, something like wistfulness being wiped from his face. “I used to live there.” he says, pointing at the house just barely visible from where they’re stood.</p>
<p>Conner had gotten the impression over the past five months that Tim had been wealthy before the apocalypse but he hadn’t realised he had been quite <em>that </em>wealthy. He digs up some of his usual bravado and pulls a shocked expression. “Oh my God, I’m a gold digger.” he says, feigning a great realisation.</p>
<p>Tim releases a bark of laughter. “Shut up.” There’s a light blush on his face and Conner takes a moment to forget what a serious situation this is and be proud of himself for putting it there.</p>
<p>Tim pushes his way into the mansion they landed in front of, Conner following his lead. He tries to look around a bit, curious as to the sort of life Batman lived before the final battle, but Tim is intent on their destination and strides through the house until reaching a grandfather clock. He turns the hands to a certain position at which point Conner hears an audible click and something starts whirring within the walls.</p>
<p>“Secret passage.” he whispers in wonder a moment before the wall in front of them swings open to reveal a darkened set of steps.</p>
<p>Tim looks at him and smiles a secret sort of smile before taking Conner’s hand and leading him down the stairs.</p>
<p>The cave he leads them into is huge.</p>
<p>It’s more of a cavern than anything, with an impossibly high ceiling and the kind of echoes that make it obvious that Conner isn’t even seeing the whole thing as Tim leads him down the stairs.</p>
<p>“Wow.” he breathes, eyes wide as he looks around the cave.</p>
<p>Tim chuckles, “Yeah, I said the same thing the first time I managed to sneak down here.”</p>
<p><em>'Sneak down here'</em> he mouths in shock. Conner knows that Tim attained his position as Robin largely through giving Batman no other choice but sometimes he forgets the amount of insanity that involved on Tim’s part.</p>
<p>“So this is where he kept his secret stash of information on aliens?”</p>
<p>“Yeah.” Tim grimaces. “Most of it is gone now though. Batman stored most stuff on the batcomputer but that died ages ago.” Tim gestures towards a huge machine covered in dust.</p>
<p>“Batcomputer?” Conner manages with a weak smile, definitely not thinking about how awful it is that there’s so much about his heritage that he’s never going to know.</p>
<p>Tim rolls his eyes. “Apparently Dick, the first Robin, named all of Batman’s equipment when he was nine. I led to some bold choices.” Tim pulls a torch out of his harness and starts walking to one of the areas thrown into slightly more shadow than the rest of the cave. He flicks the torch on and Conner realises that Tim is eyeing up a huge bookcase like it’s his next meal. “The computer didn’t have everything.” Tim shrugs.</p>
<p>“Damn, I can see.” Conner has to crane his neck to see the top shelves.</p>
<p>Tim turns to look at him, “Give me a lift up to the section on Krypton?” he asks sweetly.</p>
<p>Conner doesn’t need to say anything since Tim knows his answer will be yes so he just pulls Tim close to his chest a lifts them both up to the section starting with K.</p>
<p>Tim looks at the books hungrily. “Give me a week and I’ll have all of these memorised.”</p>
<p>Conner loves the fact that he knows Tim is telling the truth.</p>
<p>A few hours later Tim and Conner are sat against one of the cave walls, leant into each other and yawning with a book about Kryptonian names balanced between their laps. “I like Kon.” Conner says, pointing at a line in the book.</p>
<p>“It’s nice, not too different.” Tim agrees sleepily. “Do you want it?”</p>
<p>“Yeah.” Conner whispers back. “I think I do.”</p>
<p>“Okay, Kon.” Tim says, eyes shuttering closed as he presses himself impossibly closer and Kon can't help himself from brushing a kiss on the top of his head.</p>
<p>They fall asleep not too long after that and Kon thinks he might feel lighter than he ever has before.</p>
<p>~</p>
<p>About a year after he first arrived in the past, Bart is patrolling the streets of San Francisco with Cassie when he says, “I think we should go find Tim and Kon sometime soon.”</p>
<p>She raises her eyebrows. They’ve talked about going to Gotham a lot but have always come to the conclusion that they should wait a little longer, just to make sure they don’t interrupt Tim and Kon’s clean up of the city. “You think it’s time?”</p>
<p>“Yeah. Gotham’s must be awful right now but in a normal way, not a way that anyone can make better. And Tim and Kon must have known each other for about a year now so I don’t <em>think</em> we’ll be getting in the way of anything if we turn up now.”</p>
<p>“I can’t believe we’ve been putting off saving the world for the sake of teen romance.” Cassie groans, putting her head in her hands.</p>
<p>Bart makes a gasp as scandalised as he can, “We have been putting off saving the world so that Gotham doesn’t descend into anarchy the second Tim does something that isn’t keeping it in order and so that the team has good enough interpersonal relations to work together effectively.” Bart sticks his nose in the air as haughtily as he can manage, “It has <em>nothing </em>to do with teen romance.”</p>
<p>“Sure it doesn’t.” Cassie narrows her eyes skeptically. “Nothing to do with them being the ‘romance of the ages’” she says, managing to draw her hands away from her face just long enough to use finger quotes.</p>
<p>“I can’t believe this.” Bart tries to look offended through his grin. “I go to <em>all </em>the effort of coming back from the future to make the world a better place and my decision making gets questioned like <em>this</em>?”</p>
<p>“Fine, fine.” Cassie relents, finally giving into the urge to grin back at Bart. “I’ve got a different question though.” She slaps her hands onto Bart’s shoulders so that they have to stop walking and look at each other. “Have you been calling me, you, Tim and Kon ‘the team’ in your head?”</p>
<p>Bart looks down and tries to fight the blush he can feel rising because he <em>knows</em> that if he looks up Cassie is going to be laughing at him. “Maybe. Possibly.”</p>
<p>Cassie releases his shoulders and lets out a loud laugh like music. Bart finally looks up and her head is craned back with her eyes screwed up with mirth. She looks down long enough to see Bart’s mildly embarrassed expression and manages to contain herself for a moment. “I think it’s sweet.” she says. Bart’s about to mime throwing up at that until she continues, “If the four of us are already a team in your head, then it probably won’t take very long for us to be a team in the real world, right?”</p>
<p>Bart still wants to mime throwing up for being called ‘sweet’ but manages to hold it in to honour Cassie’s honesty. “I hope so.” he says confidently. The two of them smile at each other the same way they always do when they talk about saving the world one day.</p>
<p>After a week of wrapping things up on the West Coast, making sure that groups of survivors are doing okay and taking out any gangs or monsters that could cause problems in the near future, Bart and Cassie head to Gotham.</p>
<p>The journey only takes a couple of hours with Bart running cross country and Cassie flying through the air above him. It feels wrong for a journey that they’ve talked about so much over the past year to be so easy.</p>
<p>Upon arrival Bart and Cassie finally understand what people meant when they talked about Gotham being cut off from the rest of society. It means that making their way in is going to be a little trickier but still manageable for the two of them.</p>
<p>Bart almost finds it satisfying that their journey won’t be <em>too </em>easy.</p>
<p>Gotham is an island city with the bridges blown. They understood that though, everyone knew that the bridges to Gotham had been destroyed mere moments after Superman fled the site of the final battle and the Justice League fell. What Bart and Cassie hadn’t quite understood was the defences on the shore surrounding Gotham.</p>
<p>Eldritch monsters roam the water’s edge. Things with too many eyes and too many teeth shuffle about, snarling at the humans with guns that patrol with them but not attacking. Bart can’t quite tell if it’s the people or the monsters who are in charge of this operation but he doesn’t suppose it makes too much difference.</p>
<p>“I can’t believe none of them are looking up.” Cassie whispers from Bart’s side.</p>
<p>He shrugs. “Historically, you and Kon are the only people ever to break into Gotham by flying in so it’s not like they have <em>that </em>much reason to be worried.”</p>
<p>Cassie slugs him lightly in the shoulder before crouching down in front of him and Bart happily climbs on her back. Cassie gives <em>fantastic </em>piggybacks.</p>
<p>She flies them up until they’re high enough to be brushing the clouds so that they have some cover despite not really needing it. Bart unhooks an arm from around Cassie’s neck and reaches into the clouds above them so that he can watch the tips of his fingers disappear into the shifting mist. Cassie gives his legs a light squeeze in admonishment for being distracted during a mission and Bart begrudgingly hooks his arm back around her neck, smearing the cold wetness of the cloud on her cheek in retaliation.</p>
<p>It takes mere seconds to cross the patrols of the shore and then the body of water surrounding Gotham.</p>
<p>“Guess we’ve arrived.” Cassie whispers as she starts to descend a little, probably looking to land on the tallest sky scraper just because she can.</p>
<p>“Kind of anticlimactic.” Bart whispers back and Cassie grunts in agreement.</p>
<p>After a whispered discussion about which building really is the tallest since it’s kind of hard to tell from above, they alight on one which might have been offices once. It has a huge ‘W’ on the front, all the other letters that must have been there in the past having fallen off.</p>
<p>Once they’re on something solid Bart jumps off Cassie’s back and she turns around so that they can look at each other. The second they’re face to face the two of them break into breathless giggles.</p>
<p>“We’re here.” Bart says through the laughter, pulling Cassie into a hug. “We’re gonna save the world.”</p>
<p>She muffles her giggles with his shoulder. “We’re gonna save the world.” she repeats, completing the phrase that’s become their mantra over the past year.</p>
<p>“Can we get in on some of this saving the world action? Or is it a members only kind of thing?” A voice cuts in from behind them and Bart and Cassie whirl around to see two boys their age stood on the rooftop with them.</p>
<p>The one who spoke must be Kon. He’s the bigger of the two, wearing a black leather jacket and a confident half smile, leaning towards the other boy. The one who must be Tim is small with a staff in his hand and ready for a fight. He’s certainly the more cautious of the two and Bart can’t help but find how well they match how he’d imagined them to be incredibly cool.</p>
<p>“Yes, you can get in on saving the world! That’s the whole reason we came here!” Bart tells them. Considering how much he and Cassie have been discussing Tim and Kon over the past year it feels a lot like Bart already knows them so he decides to just give in to the urge to hug them. He runs over to Kon and wraps his arms around the boy tight. Bart feels him stiffen in surprise and lets go before Kon has time to relax. He’s speeding towards Tim, ready to give him the same treatment, but runs straight into a metal staff pointed at his chest.</p>
<p>“Sorry.” Bart says, maybe a little winded. “Should have guessed, history doesn’t paint you as much of a hugger.”</p>
<p>Tim and Kon exchange a look through which they seem to have a whole conversation.</p>
<p>“History?” Tim asks, looking at Bart with slightly more curiosity than suspicion which Bart takes as a win.</p>
<p>Cassie comes up from behind him and puts her hands on Bart’s shoulders to drag him backwards, putting some distance between the two of them and Tim and Kon. “He’s from the future. There’s a whole story involving heroism and time travel and it’s incredibly inspirational.” She shrugs. “I’m pretty sure that the first time we met Bart knew more about me than I did. I’m Cassie Sandsmark by the way.”</p>
<p>“I’m Kon.”</p>
<p>“Tim Drake.”</p>
<p>“Cassie already said but I’m Bart Allen.”</p>
<p>Tim raises an eyebrow from behind his mask. “Allen as in Barry Allen?”</p>
<p>“Yes!” Bart fist pumps. “I knew you knew who my grandad was. So many people owe me money.”</p>
<p>Cassie flicks the back of Bart’s head. “None of them have been born yet, doofus.”</p>
<p>“They’ll owe me money once we’re all dead.” Bart shrugs, “At least I’ll be rich in the underworld.”</p>
<p>Tim takes a step towards them, “Barry Allen was your grandfather?”</p>
<p>“Correctomundo! That’s where I got all,” Bart calls the lightning up out of his veins until it’s tracing patterns against his skin. “This.”</p>
<p>Kon 'Ooo's at the light show while Tim looks at Bart with the sharp curiosity of a scientist before his gaze darts up to where Cassie is stood behind him.</p>
<p>“And you have powers too? You can fly?”</p>
<p>“Yup.” she says, popping the p, “And I have superstrength. And I’m more durable than people without powers. And I’m fast, not like Bart but I can fly supersonic.” she starts tapping her fingers on Barts shoulders like she sometimes does when she’s nervous. “The gods kind of want me to replace Wonder Woman so I pretty much have her powers, if that helps.”</p>
<p>Kon lets out a long, low whistle and even Tim looks impressed.</p>
<p>“We should race sometime.” Kon says and Tim slaps him lightly on the shoulder even though he must know that all of them can see that he’s smiling. “It would be fun!” Kon defends, “Me and Cassie probably go pretty similar speeds.”</p>
<p>Bart cranes his head back so that he can look behind him and see the slow smile growing on Cassie’s face, “That actually sounds pretty fun.”</p>
<p>Kon scoffs, “Of course it sounds fun, it’s my idea.” Bart can see Tim roll his eyes at that even though his mask has the eye holes whited out. “If you wanna make it interesting we could do it so that we have to get our respective non-flying favourite people across the finish line with us.”</p>
<p>Bart twists so that he can see Cassie’s eyes light up the way they always do in the face of a challenge. “You are so on.” she says, the smile that had started growing across her face earlier now as wide as Bart’s ever seen it in the company of people who aren't just him.</p>
<p>“Are we going to talk about any of the saving the world stuff Bart mentioned first?” Tim asks a tad helplessly.</p>
<p>Bart moves away from Cassie, who’s now in a lively debate with Kon about what they should bet on the race, to pat Tim’s shoulder and is pleased not to be hit with the staff again. “All of that’s a good few years away. We definitely have time for a race before we start planning for that.”</p>
<p>“Oh, okay.” Tim says, a little surprised. Bart wonders if all the things he heard about Batman are true and if Tim has gotten used to the fact that he can sometimes be a teenager instead of a soldier yet. “Batman had some research that he kept secret on speedsters,” he says slyly and Bart isn’t quite sure where this is headed, “I’ll show you some of it if you don’t tell Cassie about Kon’s TTK before the race.”</p>
<p>“Only some of it?”</p>
<p>Tim chuckles a little and it’s as endearing as it is scary, “I’ve got to keep some tricks up my sleeve if the four of us are going to stick around together long enough to save the world, right?”</p>
<p>Bart feels a grin growing on his face because he had never thought about how much he might like the words ‘the four of us’ coming from the same Tim Drake he heard about in folk tales. “Yeah.” Bart says, the words only just managing to make their way past the grin on his face. “Sounds good.”</p>
<p>The two of them turn to join in Kon and Cassie’s discussion about what kind of bets are suitable for a race and Tim shifts so that he can wrap an arm around Kon's waist. Kon pauses in the argument long enough to kiss Tim's cheek and Cassie shoots Bart a smug look over the fact that they called it, probably before the boys in front of them did.</p>
<p>Bart thinks about how these people are going to help him save the world and every doubt he has had since he stepped out of his time machine into a world full of hardship and pain melts into the Gotham night.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>And there it is!!! Hope you enjoyed it! I'm a slut for angst but happy endings make me Soft</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>tumblr: https://elowenp.tumblr.com/</p></blockquote></div></div>
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